PRIVATE  LIBRARY 

OF 

C.  A.  DOYLE 
Please  return  promptly 

No. . 


WHAT  ffOOLD  YOU  WLOTE? 


BY   THE    AUTHOR    OF 

"WHAT  WILL   THE   WORLD   SAY?" 


CHICAGO: 
BELFORD,    CLARKE    &    CO. 

ST.   LOUIS: 

BELFORD   &   CLARKE    PUBLISHING   CO. 

1881. 


Printed  and  Bound  by  DONOHUE  &  HENNEBERRY,  Chicago. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE  OLD  HOME »...,       I 

CHAPTER  II. 
IN  THE  SUNSHINE 9 

CHAPTER  HI. 
"WHAT  WOULD  You  DO,  LOVE?"...., 17 

CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  "  MERMAID." 27 

CHAPTER  V. 
MORS  JANUA 40 

CHAPTER  VI. 

NOV^E    VlT^E 48 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  HOME-COMING 62 

CHAPTER  VIII. 
FENCED  IN 72 

CHAPTER  IX. 

DORA  DEMONSTRATES 86 

CHAPTER  X. 
OVER  THE  WINE  AND  WALNUTS 97 

CHAPTER  XL 
DILEMMAS 105 

CHAPTER  XII. 
HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND 1 16 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

CANIS  IN  PU^ESEPI 133 

N 


213SS17 


vi  Contents. 

FAOK 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

PAYING  THE  B'ILL 147 

CHAPTER  XV. 
DEMETER . 154 

CHAPTER  XVI. 
BY  PRINCIPLE 168 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

LONG  FIELD  FARM 180 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 
LATE  FOR  LUNCHEON  . ., 192 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

PAYING  VISITS , 201 

CHAPTER  XX. 

EXPLANATIONS 212 

CHAPTER  XXI. 
THE  POSTERN  GATE 225 

CHAPTER  XXII. 
WHAT  THE  DAY  BROUGHT  FORTH.... 236 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 
CONSENTING  WITH  SINNERS   244 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 
BETWEEN  Two  FIRES 256 

CHAPTER  XXV. 
A  MYSTERY 270 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

BIDDEN  TO  THE  QUEST 282 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

THOROUGH _. . .   295 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 
PASSING  IT  ON 309 


Contents.  vii 

MOB 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 
IHK  ORDEAL 320 

CHAPTER  XXX. 
UNDER  HOME  ARREST 332 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 
THE  OFFER  OF  FORGIVENESS 341 

CHAPTER  XXXII. 
THE  AIR  CASTLE 355 

CHAHTER  XXXIII. 
ADDED  TO  THE  ESTATE 365 

CHAPTER  XXXIV. 
THE  CLEFT  STICK 374 

CHAPTER  XXXV. 
ABANDONED  TO  HERSELF 385 

CHAPTER  XXXVI. 
DISILLUSIONED 399 

CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

HAMLEY,  M.P 412 

CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 
WHAT  MILLTOWN  SAID 420 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

THE  LAST  LOOK 432 

CHAPTER  XL.  * 

FREE  TO  PLEAD 447 

CHAPTER  XLI. 

THE  SHADOW  IN  THE  WOOD 457 

CHAPTER  XLII. 
TRUTH  AND  SEEMING 469 


WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE? 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE    OLD     HOME. 

'0  one  out  in  the  world  talkftd  much  of  the  beauty  of  Bar- 
Bands,  because  few  knew  how  beautiful  it  was,  and 
only  those  who  lived  there  loved  it.  Perhaps  the 
fishermen  might  have  wished  that  the  iron-bound  coast  had 
been  a  trifle  less  picturesque,  and  by  so  much  the  less  danger- 
ous, and  that  the  mighty  cliffs  and  long  lines  of  sharp- ridged 
rocks  running  far  out  to  sea  and  narrowing  the  passage  to  the 
cove  to  a  mere  thread,  could  have  been  exchanged  for  one  of 
those  quiet,  smooth,  land-locked  bays  where  the  sea  is  only  a 
bigger  kind  of  lake,  and  the  fish  take  quietly  to  the  nets,  and 
keep  in  them  when  they  get  there.  And  perhaps  the  farmers 
cared  less  for  the  solemn  grandeur  of  the  wide  and  rugged  up- 
lands, with  their  old-world  memorials  of  granite  quoit  and  crom- 
lech, "castle"  and  earn,  holy  chapel  and  haunted  rounds  of 
stone-struck  "  Merry  Maidens,"  which  gave  the  purple  moors 
such  a  special  character,  than  they  did  for  the  storms  that 
swept  ov«r  their  fields,  beating  down  grass  and  corn  as  if  a 
troop  of  cavalry  had  passed  through  them,  and  ruining  in  an 
hour  the  labour  of  months.  But  the  fishermen  forgave  the 
magnificent  cruelty  of  the  jagged  and  caverned  coast  for  tlie 
sake  of  its  wealth  in  cod  and  pilchard  ;  if  the  cliffs  were  barren 
of  all  save  ling  and  heather,  golden  gorse  and  sweet  shy  sea- 
side flowers,  they  were  just  the  right  height  for  the  "  huers  " 
wutching  for  the  "  schools ; "  and  seine-fishing  prospered  if 
agriculture  had  but  a  hard  time  of  it.  And  seine-fishing  meant 
wealth  and  good  living  to  the  whole  community  when  it  wa 


2  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

large  "  school,"  and  poverty,  distress,  debt,  and  well-nigh  star- 
vation, when  it  fell  short. 

Then  again,  counting  up  the  mercies,  which  perhaps  is  the 
wisest  kind  of  arithmetic  when  dealing  with  things  human,  the 
children  and  women  were  healthy,  and  no  doctor  could  have 
picked  up  even  half  a  living  at  Barsands,  which  saved  the  pub- 
lic pocket  on  that  side  ;  and  there  were  large  tracts  of  common- 
land  swarming  with  rabbits,  where  the  people  had  the  right  of 
pasturage,  turf-cutting,  and  free-warren,  which  somewhat  com- 
pensated for  the  want  of  wood  and  productive  gardens  charac- 
teristic of  this  special  stretch  of  coast  land. 

It  was  a  breezy,  healthy,  untrammelled  kind  of  place ;  a  place 
which  had  no  large  landholders,  no  resident  gentry,  and  which 
did  not  seem  to  have  any  lord  of  the  manor,  resident  or  absent. 
Or,  if  it  had,  then  one  who  did  not  trouble  himself  about  his 
manorial  privileges,  but  left  everything  as  he  found  it,  to  na- 
ture and  the  community.  There  were  innumerable  rights  of 
way  about,  but  very  few  made  roads,  and  not  one  that  could 
be  called  good.  A  noticeable  paucity  of  fences,  and  those 
which  existed  generously  dilapidated,  with  untrustworthy 
gates  and  breached  stiles,  gave  a  haphazard  communistic  look 
to  the  division  of  fields  and  farms  which  did  not  show  great 
territorial  tenacity,  but  seemed  as  if  everything  belonged  to 
everybody  alike  ;  and  there  was  not  a  bolt  shot  nor  a  door 
locked  in  the  whole  village  by  night  or  by  day — whether  the 
house  inmates  were  helpless  through  sleep,  or  absent  at  market, 
or  to  "  preachin' "  at  the  Wesleyan  chapel. 

They  were  a  poor  set  at  Barsands  doubtless  ;  unlettered  ; 
unmannered,  if  you  will ;  but  they  were  innocent  folk  in  their 
Way,  hard-working,  high-minded,  and  honest  to  a  proverb. 

This  did  not,  however,  make  them  amenable  to  law  qua  law; 
and  the  man  who  would  have  taken  it  in  hand  to  deprive  the  in- 
habitants of  Barsands  of  what  they  considered  their  rights  of  cove 
or  cammon,  or  to  coerce  them  into  ways  unaccustomed  and  un- 
congenial, would  have  had  tafight  for  it,  though  he  came  with  his 
pockets  stuffed  full  of  the  Queen's  writs.  They  were  a  stiff- 
necked,  clannish  set  of  people ;  and,  as  their  betters  had  left 
them  alone  for  so  long  now,  the  general  feeling  of  the  place  was 
decidedly  in  favour  of  being  left  alone  to  the  end. 

It  wai  a  small  community,  all  told  ;   a  mere  fishing  village 


THE  OLD  HOME.  3 

on  the  North  Cornwall  coast,  where  a  handful  of  stalwart  men 
fought  with  the  sea  for  their  daily  living,  and  put  money  in  the 
Penrose  bank  when  their  take  of  "  fair  maids"  was  more  than 
ordinarily  successful.  The  clergyman,  who  took  pupils  to  eke 
out  a  scanty  income,  and  who  lived  inland  three  miles  over  the 
hill,  coming  into  Barsands  only  for  an  alternate  Sunday  ser- 
vice, and  when  he  did  come  addressing  empty  benches — for  the 
Wesleyans  had  got  the  majority  of  souls,  as  they  have  all 
through  Cornwall ;  Captain  Kemball,  an  old  naval  officer,  who 
lived  with  his  niece  Patricia  at  Holdfast  Cottage,  at  the  turn 
of  the  valley,  and  Miss  Pritchard,  who,  with  her  two  sisters, 
kept  a  young  ladies'  boarding  school  on  the  Penrose  road,  were 
the  sole  representatives  of  the  wealth,  rank  and  learning  of  the 
world.  The  rest  of  the  community  consisted  of  the  fisher-folk, 
congregated  for  the  most  part  in  a  little  nest  of  huts  and  cabins 
between  the  cliff  at  the  mouth  of  the  cove  where  the  fish-houses 
were  ;  the  coast-guards  in  their  shining  black  cottages,  sur- 
rounded by  dazzling  white  walls  on  the  slope  of  Penthill  and 
just  below  the  signal  station  ;  a  handful  of  poorly  living  day- 
labourers,  who  did  odd  jobs  about  the  boats  or  the  beasts, 
the  cove  or  the  farms  indifferently  ;  and  the  small  traders  in 
the  village,  who  combined  several  callings  in  one,  and,  as  in 
the  post-office,  mixed  up  letters  and  Queen's  heads,  bacon,  tape, 
candles,  pennyworths  of  medicine,  sugar,  and  the  like,  with  no 
more  sense  of  classification  than  there  was  among  the  fish  when 
the  net  was  hauled  in. 

There  was  only  one  house  that  ventured  to  style  itself  an 
inn.  This  was  the  Lame  Duck,  kept  by  one  Mrs.  Jose,  or,  as 
she  was  generally  called,  Mother  Jose,  in  whose  hand  lay  vir- 
tually the  whole  of  the  inland  trade  of  Barsands.  Left  a  widow 
with  five  sons  thirty  years  ago,  she  had  made  a  good  fight  in 
her  day,  and  she  was  now  enjoying  her  reward,  if  not  in  ease 
of  living,  yet  in  worldly  gear  and  local  power.  She  was  a  po- 
tentate after  a  kind  in  the  little  village,  and  was  reputed  to  be 
worth  untold  gold.  She  kept  the  Lame  Duck,  and  she  kept  it 
well ;  and  she  horsed,  ran,  and  personally  conducted  the  omni- 
bus that  went  twice  a  week  in  summer  to  the  market  town. 
This  was  Penrose,  fifteen  miles  off;  and  the  way  lay  over  a 
wild,  whisht  country,  with  a  road  that  was  simply  a  dry  water- 
course in  summer  and  a  wet  one  in  winter.  It  was  not  much 


4  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

of  a  market  when  you  got  there ;  but  it  was  the  best  to  be  had, 
and  the  Barsands  people  thought  it  could  not  be  bettered. 

The  five  sons  who  had  been  left  as  five  dead  weights  on  the 
woman's  hands  in  those  sorrowful  days  of  thirty  years  ago, 
were  now  all  parts  of  the  clever  mechanism  of  her  life ;  and 
she  took  care  that  they  should  be  paying  parts.  Not  one  of 
them  was  his  own  master  yet,  not  one  married  or  in  his  own 
home.  Two  worked  on  the  farm  and  got  journeyman's  wages, 
no  more  ;  one  helped  in  the  house,  brewed,  kept  the  accounts 
— and  the  peace  when  needed ;  one  drove  the  omnibus,  and 
looked  after  the  horses  on  the  off  days ;  and  the  last  was  a  kind 
of  general  agent  for  the  house  in  Penrose,  where  he  sold  the 
surplus  produce  of  the  farm  and  booked  travellers  and  merchan- 
dise by  the  Barsands  coach — as  they  called  the  shaky  old  van, 
omnibus-rigged.  It  was  a  powerful  combination  ,  and  Mother 
Jose,  a  mighty  woman  cf  sixty-three,  standing  five  feet  eight 
"  in  her  stocking  feet,"  and  as  free  with  her  fists  as  she  was 
close  with  her  pocket,  was  more  regarded  in  the  place  than 
queen  or  clergy.  All  the  people  who  were  in  debt  (and  they 
were  not  a  few)  were  in  debt  to  her ;  and  the  mixture  of  fear 
and  respect,  gratitude,  hatred  and  envy  which  was  added  to 
the  heavy  interest  she  claimed  "  on  account,"  was  almost  as 
strong  as  a  superstition. 

In  summer  the  little  village  was  quite  gay  with  such  simple- 
minded  strangers  as  could  endure  the  primitive  arrangements 
of  the  place,  arid  find  more  pleasure  in  noble  scenery  than  in  a 
good  dinner.  Sometimes  a  party  of  fashionable  London  tour- 
ists would  alight  from  Mother  Jose's  omnibus  like  a  flight  of 
peacocks  settling  down  besides  the  Dorkings.  But  they  seldom 
stayed  long.  Barsands  supplies,  with  the  meat  running  short 
and  no  fish  to  be  had  because  of  the  rough  weather,  vegetables 
unattainable,  and  the  "  clomb  "  bread  turning  out  as  hard  as  a 
stone  and  as  bitter  as  the  butter  itself,  was  not  very  tempting 
fare  for  fine  folk  accustomed  to  metropolitan  profusion  and 
perfection.  Bathing,  too,  in  the  open,  with  only  sharp 
rocks,  black  with  close-set  mussels  and  jewelled  with  sea-ane- 
mones, shining  like  rubies  and  emeralds  in  the  sun,  for  a  dress- 
ing room — unless  they  cared  to  run  for  at  least  a  hundred 
yards  over  the  rough  boulders,  and  take  shelter  in  the  caverns 
tapestried  with  Asplenium  marinum,  or  the  fairy  foliage  of  the 


THE    OLD    HOME.  5 

trite  maiden  hair — going  out  into  the  water  alone  to  do  trie 
best  they  could  for  themselves,  when  the  long,  green  Atlantic 
waves  came  rolling  in — was  shocking  to  the  gentlemen  and  la- 
dies who  could  bear  the  full  dress  of  the  London  season  and 
the  dangers  of  the  streets.  So  the  fashionable  people  came 
one  day,  and  looked  about  them  the  next,  and  went  away  the 
third,  hungry,  tired  and  sleepy,  not  having  been  able  to  make 
life  sweet  or  restful  with  such  accommodation  as  the  Lame 
Duck  afforded.  And  Barsands,  therefore,  escaped  the  perils  of 
popularity,  and  was  left  pretty  much'in  its  primitive  condition. 

To  be  sure,  there  was  more  stability  of  stay  in  the  odd-look- 
ing artist  men  and  women  in  hideous  umbrella  hats  who 
might  be  seen  trying  to  give  the  forms  of  those  stern  old  gran- 
ite cliffs,  shaggy  with  pale  grey  moss  and  solemn  with  purple 
shadows,  of  which  not  the  best  could  represent  the  true  grand- 
eur— trying  to  give  the  life  and  motion  and  purity  of  those 
heaving  lines  of  liquid  beryl  which  came  on  with  such  noble 
strength  and  splendour  of  curve  and  colour,  to  break  against 
the  rocks  with  a  light  and  grace  more  exquisite  still — and  fail- 
ing here  too — all  save  one ;  but  failing  in  a  good  cause  and  on 
a  glorious  mission.  And  sometimes  a  grave  kind  of  elderly 
woman,  may  be  with  her  young  companion,  might  comedown 
for  several  weeks  at  a  stretch,  spending  her  time  chiefly  in 
looking  for  wild  flowers  inland,  and  sea-anemones  on  the 
vein  of  slate  that  broke  edgewise  through  the  granite  of  the 
cove.  The  fishermen  wondered  what  she  wanted  with  her 
weeds  and  her  "  beasts,"  the  creatures  that  used  to  crawl  by 
dozens  into  their  crab-pots,  and  were  regarded  as  of  no  value 
to  men  or  gods,  being  good  for  neither  food  nor  bait:  but 
when  they  had  said,  "  Lord !  the  ridic'lous  foolishness  of  they 
Londoners!"  they  had  given  reason  sufficient  and  dismissed 
the  subject  as  too  trivial  for  more  attention. 

Barsands  however  did  not  place  much  store  by  these  cas- 
uals, but  got  along  in  the  best  way  it  could  with  its  regular 
inhabitants,  who,  at  the  most,  were  few. 

The  ladies'  school  kept  by  Miss  Pritchard  numbered  some 
eight  boarders,children  of  the  well-to-do  tradesmen  in  Penrose. 
The  resident  governesses  were  the  younger  Misses  Pritchard, 
who  had  been  expressly  educated  for  that  purpose,  one  having 
been  six  months  in  Paris  and  the  other  the  same  length  of  time 


ft  "WEIAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

in  Germany,  and  both  considered  as  good  as  natives  of  either 
country  respectively.  Added  to  the  permament  eight,  one  day- 
scholar  of  an  uncertain  kind  had  also  drunk  of  the  Pritchardian 
spring.  This  was  Patricia  Kemball,  the  niece  of  that  wooden- 
legged  old  captain  at  Holdfast  Cottage  of  whom  mention  has 
been  already  made  ;  a  scholar  said  by  the  three  ladies  among 
themselves  to  be  eminently  unsatisfactory,  and  doing  credit  to 
no  one.  Last  year,  however,  Patricia  being  then  seventeen, 
her  education  had  been  considered  finished  ;  so  that  even  the 
desultory  kind  of  teaching  which  had  gone  by  that  name  for 
twelve  years  had  run  itself  dry,  and  no  more  schooling  was  held 
to  be  necessary  for  a  girl  who  knew  absolutely  nothing  of  all 
that  other  girls  are  taught  to  prize  as  the  best  things  women 
can  learn. 

This  was  the  Captain's  doing,  not  the  ladies'.  He  did  not 
like  the  "  old  maids,"  as  he  called  them ;  sometimes  "old  cats," 
as  a  variation  ;  and  they  did  not  like  him.  They  thought  he 
should  have  married  Miss  Matilda  fifteen  years  ago,  and  that 
he  had  behaved  ill  in  consequence  ;  and  he  took  it  that  they  had 
made  a  dead  set  at  him  ;  and  as  he  wanted  nothing  with  any 
of  them,  and  least  of  all  with  Miss  Matilda,  he  resented  their 
attentions  as  indelicate,  burglarious,  and  unfair.  So  there  was 
war  between  the  two  houses  ;  and  it  told  well  for  the  Captain's 
generosity  that  he  thought  more  of  Patricia's  well  being  than 
his  own  distaste,  and  sent  her  to  profit  by  his  enemies'  brains 
and  to  put  money  in  their  pockets  in  return. 

It  must  be  confessed,  however,  that  his  system  was  a  trying 
one  ;  and  it  was  well  that  Patricia  was  a  good  girl  by  nature, 
else  his  peculiar  method  of  upbringing  might  have  proved  more 
meritorious  in  design  than  advantageous  in  result.  To  be  sure 
he  had  taught  her  to  speak  the  truth  ;  to  be  loyal  to  her  word 
and  faithful  to  her  trust;  to  abhor  suspicion  ;  to  be  obedient  to 
her  superiors,  and  to  sacrifice  herself  when  need  was  with  cheer- 
fulness and  without  regret.  His  moral  motto  had  been  "  Tho- 
rough," if  his  intellectual  system  had  been  patch-work ;  and  his 
pupil  had  learnt  as  he  had  taught.  For  the  rest,  he  himself  had 
instructed  her  in  coast-line  geography,  in  astronomy,  and  the 
art  of  navigation.  She  knew  the  name  and  purpose  of  every 
shroud  and  sail  in  the  model  of  his  old  ship,  the  Holdfast,  which 
he  had  rigged  up  on  the  lawn,  the  flags  of  all  nations,  and  the 


HIE  OLD  HOME.  7 

meaning  of  ship-signals  ;  she  could  read  off-hand  the  difference 
between  the  lines  of  a*  man-of-war  and  a  merchantman  ;  and 
she  cherished  a  grave  contempt  for  iron-clads  and  steam.  But 
she  could  neither  tat  nor  crochet,  for  all  that  the  Misses  Prit- 
chard  had  made  both  these  arts  salient  accomplishments  in 
their  programme ;  though,  to  do  her  justice,  she  could  darn 
stockings,  hem  and  stitch  and  sew,  make  a  pudding,  and  bud 
roses,  with  the  best.  Also  she  could  skate  like  a  bird  and 
climb  trees  like  a  squirrel ;  and  she  liked  galloping  over  the 
moors  better  than  she  liked  any  other  pleasure  in  the  world 
save  boating  in  a  breeze  with  the  Mermaid  in  good  humour. 

The  Misses  Pritchard  said  she  would  be  ruined  if  this  kind  of 
thing  went  on.  When  they  saw  her  streaming  over  the  country 
with  her  flapping  straw  hat  half-way  down  her  back,  and  her 
long  brown  hair  flying  like  a  mane  behind  her,  they  said  the  Cap- 
tain was  a  very  self-willed  old  man  to  let  her  go  on  so.  It  was 
downright  shameful ;  and  he  would  live  to  repent  it.  And  they 
said  it  so  often  that  at  last  the  Captain  himself  caught  the  echo, 
and  became  doubtful  of  the  wisdom  of  his  ways.  Then  he 
would  send  Pat,  as  he  called  her,  for  another  quarter ;  begin- 
ning regularly  and  with  the  strictest  intentions,  but  invariably 
ending  by  keeping  her  at  home  four  days  out  of  the  six,  honestly 
convinced  that  he  was  doing  the  best  for  her  in  his  power,  and 
that  his  own  private  lessons,  added  to  exercise  and  fresh  air, 
were  more  to  the  purpose  than  all  she  could  learn  in  the  "  kit- 
ten house,"  as  he  irreverently  called  the  school. 

Then  again  he  began  to  doubt,  when  the  Misses  Pritchard 
had  said  something  more  than  ordinarily  tart,  and  he  had  heard 
of  it,  as  he  always  did ;  and  tormented  himself  with  conscien- 
tious scruples.  But  when  he  looked  at  her,  and  noted  how  she 
had  thriven  on  her  training,  with  such  an  exuberance  of  life, 
such  a  power  and  splendour  of  girlish  health  and  beauty  as  h« 
had  never  seen  surpassed — not  even  in  the  South  Seas  where 
he  had  left  a  dusky,  sleek-haired  romance  in  old  days  that 
haunted  him — he  stifled  his  misgivings  ;  shut  his  eyes  to  all  but 
the  fact  that  she  was  perfect  in  constitution,  in  principles,  and 
in  temper  ;  lovely  to  look  at  and  good  to  be  with  ;  and  that  she 
had  never  given  him  a  day's  uneasiness  during  the  twelve  years 
of  his  guardianship.  Still,  he  was  conscious  that  at  eighteen 
years  of  age  she  needed  more  in  her  home  life  than  the  society 


8  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

of  an  old  sea-captain,  though  he  could  tell  her  about  the  Chinese 
war  where  he  had  lost  his  leg,  and  teach  her  the  names  of  the 
constellations  and  all  the  technicalities  of  the  Holdfast  model. 

The  question,  however,  was ;  What  was  it  she  needed  ?  and 
how  could  he  get  it  for  her,  even  if  he  found  out  ?  His  means 
•were  limited,  and  his  knowledge  of  the  world  on  a  par  with  his 
means  ;  but  he  must  do  something  all  the  same.  So  he  took 
the  thought  to  heart,  and  racked  his  brains  night  and  day  to 
discover  what  it  was  Patricia  ought  to  have  to  perfect  her  educa- 
tion and  condition — "  the  cats  "  being  of  no  more  good — and 
when  he  had  found  it  he  would  give  it,  let  it  cost  what  it  would. 

Meanwhile  Patricia  lived  on,  blithe  as  bird  in  bower,  con- 
scious of  no  loss  in  her  life,  feeling  no  pain,  foreseeing  no  sor- 
row. Youth,  health,  a  conscience  as  clear  as  the  sky,  and  love 
as  warm  as  the  sun,  made  up  the  glad  catalogue  of  her  days. 
She  knew  no  evil  and  she  feared  none.  Her  duty  was  plain 
before  her  and  her  path  had  neither  thorns  nor  dubious  turns. 
Truth,  reverence,  obedience ;  there  was  nothing  hard  nor  diffi- 
cult in  these  ;  bred  as  she  had  been,  the  contrary  lines  would 
have  been  the  difficulties.  No  falsehood  had  ever  passed  her 
lips  ;  no  shadow  of  subterfuge,  of  sly  pretence,  of  fair-seeming 
which  was  seeming  only,  of  disloyalty  to  her  word,  of  insin- 
cerity to  herself,  or  irreverent  questioning  or  comment  on 
others,  had  ever  sullied  the  stainless  innocence  of  her  soul. 
Frank  and  free,  loyal  and  loving,  with  the. sea  and  the  rocks, 
the  wild  flowers  and  the  wild  birds  as  her  playmates,  Gordon 
as  her  friend,  her  uncle  to  reverence,  to  obey,  and  God,  who 
was  never  her  tyrant,  to  fear — only  her  Father  Invisible  to 
worship — what  more  could  she  want  1  Had  she  been  asked, 
she  would  have  said  "  Nothing."  Her  life  was  one  of  abso- 
lute contentment,  of  cloudless  joy;  and  strong  of  heart  ond 
energy,  rich  in  vitality,  in  cheerfulness,  in  youth,  she  felt  as  if 
nothing  could  ever  touch  or  harm  her ;  as  if  she  could  neither 
die  out  of  existence  nor  be  crushed  by  circumstance ;  as  if  she 
must  always  be  as  she  was  now— happy,  free,  and  fearless,  and 
with  a  conscience  void  of  offence  towards  God  and  man. 


IN   THE  SUNSHBOL 


CHAPTER  IL 

IN  THE  SUNSHINE. 

K;j  HE  Captain  was  sitting  in  the  porch  of  the  cottage,  which 
gave  to  the  South  and.looked  ou  the  sea.  The  wind 
stirred  the  fringe  of  curly  snow-white  hair  that  hung 
ahout  his  ruddy  weather-beaten  face,  and  blew  out  the  folds 
of  the  Union .  Jack  flying  from  the  flagstaff  before  his 
house.  The  white  clouds  scudded  over  the  bright  blue  sky  ; 
the  white  waves  leaped  about  the  feet  of  the  old- grey  cliffs 
and  broke  into  backward  streams  of  spray  as  they  came  tum- 
bling in-shore  ;  the  birds  sang  as  if  they  thought  the  spring 
had  come  again  ;  a  few  brave  bees  hummed  over  the  latest 
flowers  ;  and  the  golden  leaves  of  the  autumn  trees  shook  and 
rustled  in  the  sunshine  as  the  wind  passed  through  the  branches. 
Everywhere  was  movement,  everywhere  freshness  and  the  sen- 
timent of  life  and  freedom.  And  this  bright  October  day, 
this  blithe  and  genial  farewell  of  the  golden  autumn  time,  was 
in  true  harmony  with  the  cheerful  spirit  of  the  old  man  sitting 
in  the  porch,  and  feeling — past  seventy  as  he  was — how  good 
a  thing  it  was  to  live. 

If  only  he  knew  what  was  best  for  Patricia  !  When  once 
this  problem  was  solved  he  should  not  have  a  care  left.  It  was 
his  only  anxiety ;  and  she  dear  child — God  bless  her  ! — how 
unconscious  she  was  that  he  was  bearing  this  cross  for  her  I 

In  a  life  so  eventful  as  his,  and  with  a  temperament  the 
reverse  of  indifferent — given  indeed  to  exaggerate  rather  than 
reduce  any  question  whatsoever  took  enormous  proportions, 
and  a  difficulty  of  decision  became  a  moral  burden  grievously 
oppressive  with  a  sense  of  responsibilty  though  never  making 
him  downcast  nor  ill-tempered. 

Sitting  there  in  the  porch,  touched  by  the  sun  and  stirred 
by  the  wind  whiles  sweeping  the  horizon  with  his  glass,  whiles 
fingering  his  round  rasped  chin  as  if  counsel  lurked  among  the 
stubbly  beard-roots,  suddenly  the  solution  struck  him.  It 


10  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

came  like  an  inspiration  born  of  the  sunshine,  and  the  wind  on 
this  swift  and  hurrying  October  day.  A  lady  companion  ! 
That  was  it.  A  lady  companion  who  would  teach  her  all 
those  little  feminine  graces  he  could  not  supply  ;  nor,  for  the 
matter  of  that,  could  the  Miss  Pritchards,  with  all  their  preten- 
sions and  "  parly  vouing  ;  "  who  would  put  the  supreme  touch  on 
this  jewel  which  nature  had  fashioned  so  nobly,  and  over  which 
he  had  wrought  so  tenderly  with  such  ability  as  had  been  given 
him.  Yes,  that  was  just  it ;  and  his  thought  was  the  Eureka 
over  again. 

He  heard  Patricia's  fresh  young  voice  trilling  out  the  "  Min- 
strel Boy,"  as  she  was  industriously  fighting  her  way  upstairs 
through  a  refractory  bit  of  sewing.  It  was  a  rent  in  her  gown, 
made  yesterday  when  she  climbed  the  apple  tree  and  came 
down  with  a  run,  as  a  practical  lesson  on  the  folly  of  trusting 
to  rotten  branches. 

"  Hi  there,  my  love  !  "  he  shouted. 

"  Yes,  uncle,"  said  Patricia  thrusting  her  head  out  of  the 
window,  which  was  framed  in  by  the  crimson  leaves  of  a  Vir- 
ginia creeper.  It  was  like  a  picture  by  Jordaens,  only  better 
done. 

"  Come  down,  I  want  to  speak  to  you,"  said  Captain  Kern- 
ball  ;  and  Patricia  throwing  her  work  on  the  floor,  came  down 
the  stairs,  two  at  a  time,  and  jumped  across  the  hall  like  a 
school  boy  into  th ,  porch. 

"  Yes,  uncle,  she  said  in  her  clear  voice,  louder  than  most 
girls  voices  because  the  Captain  was  a  trifle  deaf.  "  What  do 
you  wanb  ? " 

"  I  want  to  speak  to  you,  my  dear,"  said  Captain  Kemball 
gravely. 

She  looked  at  him  with  a  little  surprise.  The  unusual  solem- 
nity of  his  voice  struck  her. 

"  All  right,  I  am  ready,"  she  answered ;  and  sat  herself 
down  on  the  opposite  bench,  her  hands  folded  on  her  lap,  and 
her  attitude  "  attention." 

He  raised  his  eyes  to  her  fondly.  There  was  nothing  that 
pleased  him  more  than  this  ready,  heartsome  acquiescence 
which  was  one  of  Patricia's  characteristics.  There  was  no  skulk- 
;ng  about  her.  Whatever  she  might  have  in  hand  she  left  it  at  a 
word  or  a  sign  from  him ;  always  with  that  sunny  smile  on  her 


IN  THE  SUNSHINE.  11 

fresh  fair  face,  always  with  that  frank  look  in  her  dark  grey 
ryes,  and  that  air  of  almost  soldierly  attention  in  her  upright 
Mipple  figure,  which  gave  the  value  of  meaning  to  please  to 
all  she  did.  She  was  alive,  body  and  soul,  heart  and  brain ; 
and  even  her  silence  was  more  active  than  many  people's 
words. 

"  Patricia,"  said  Captain  Kemball,  "  I  have  found  it." 

"  Yes,  uncle,"  she  repeated  for  the  third  time.  "  What  have 
you  found  ? " 

"  What  you  want,  my  dear." 

"  Oh !  But  I  did  not  know  I  wanted  anything,"  she  said, 
with  a  pretty  perplexity  on  her  face. 

"  Yes  you  do,  my  dear,"  he  answered  positively. 

"  Very  well."  She  smiled.  "  If  you  say  so,  I  suppose  I  do  ; 
but  I  did  not  know  it.  What  is  it  ? " 

"  A  lady  companion." 

"  A  lady  what  ?  "  said  Patricia  with  the  air  of  one  who  has 
heard  and  has  not  understood. 

"  A  lady  companion,"  repeated  the  Captain  gallantly  stick- 
ing to  his  guns.  She  was  not  going  to  be  "  nasty "  surely — 
and  for  the  first  time  in  her  life  ? 

"  What  on  earth  can  have  put  that  notion  into  your  head, 
uncle  ?  "  asked  Patricia  in  amazement.  "  What  do  I  want  with 
a  lady  companion  1  She  would  be  horribly  in  our  way — yours 
as  well  as  mine." 

"  As  for  mine,"  he  said  resignedly,  "  I  should  not  object  to 
anything  that  was  for  your  good." 

There  was  no  affectation  in  this.  He  too  thought  this  lady 
companion  would  be  horribly  in  his  way  ;  but  he  would  bear 
this  cross  as  cheerfully  as  he  had  borne  that  of  his  own  per- 
plexity before. 

"  But  what  do  I  want  with  a  lady  companion  at  all  ? " 
reiterated  his  niece.  "  I  am  very  happy  as  I  am  ;  as  happy  as 
the  day  is  long  ;  and  I  am  sure  we  should  not  get  on  better  with 
a  third  person  in  the  house.  Why,  uncle  dear,  what  a  funny 
idea ! " 

"  But  you  will  like  it,  Pat  ?  "  he  said. 

"  I  am  sure  I  should  not,"  said  Patricia ;  "  and  I  cannot 
think  why  you  should  say  so.  There  would  be  nothing  to  like 
in  having  a  stranger  always  with  one.  Fancy  never  being  able 


12  "-WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

to  be  alone  to  our  two  selves  again !  Oh,  uncle,  how  horrid !" 
And  here  she  asked  again :  "  Who  can  have  put  such  an  idea 
into  your  head  ? " 

"  Providence,"  said  the  Captain  gravely. 

And  Patricia  did  not  laugh. 

"  Very  well,  uncle  dear,"  she  answered  after  a  short  pause. 
"  You  know  best,  of  course.  If  you  really  think  it  right  that 
we  should  have  a  lady  companion  here  for  my  sake,  we  will 
get  one;  but  I  hope  you  will  be  quite  sure  that  it  is  the  right 
thing  to  do  before  you  decide,  because  it  will  be  difficult,  look 
at  it  how  we  will.  You  see  the  house  is  so  small,  and  the 
spare  bedroom  wants  furnishing,  and  we  ought  to  have  a  new 
carpet  in  the  sitting-room ;  Sarah  and  I  have  darned  that  old 
thing  till  we  can  darn  it  no  more.  And  we  want  some  cups 
and  saucers,  and  lots  of  things  in  the  kitchen,  and  a  coal- 
scoop;  Sarah  says  she  scatters  the  small  coals  through  the 
holes  in  the  old  one.  And  the  dinner-set  is  all  chipped  and 
half  of  it  broken.  There  is  no  end  to  it  all  when  we  once  be- 
gin! And  a  lady  companion  is  an  awfully  expensive  thing, 
I  have  heard;  and,  of  course,  though  we  can  go  on  very  well 
"as  we  are,  she  must  have  everything  ship-shape  and  nice  when 
she  comes.  But  you  know  best,"  she  repeated  cheerfully, 
leaning  forward  and  laying  her  hand  on  his;  "  and  whatever 
you  wish,  you  are  very  sure  I  shall  say  yes,  are  you  not,  dear  ?" 

"  God  bless  you!  to  be  sure  I  am,  my  girl,"  answered  the 
Captain  warmly.  "  And  now  that  you  tell  me  all  this,  I  '11 
look  into  my  balance  and  think  of  it." 

"  Meanwhile,  I  must  go  and  finish  my  mending,  said 
Patricia  with  a  kind  of  conscientious  solemnity. 

Needlework  was  about  the  most  sobering  occupation  she 
knew;  it  kept  her  so  still  and  took  so  much  time. 

"All  right,  dear.  But  I  say,  Pat,  I  do  not  like  to  know 
that  things  are  wanting  in  the  house  which  we  should  be 
obliged  to  have  if  the  lady  companion  came.  My  girl  ought 
to  be  as  well  found  as  any  lady  companion  that  ever  stepped. 
Eh  "how  have  you  let  things  go  so  far  a  drift?  Have  you 
had  a  cat,  childvean  ?  " 

Patricia  laughed.  "  No;  our  cat  has  been  time  and  wear." 
she  answered.  "That's  enough,  too,  Sarah  says." 

"  Well,  well,  we'll  see  to  it,"  he  said,  adjusting  his  glass. 


IN  THE  SUNSHINE. 

*  Was  that  all  you  wanted  with  me,  dear  1 " 

"  Yes,  for  the  present,"  said  Captain  Kemball,  his  glass  to  his 
eye.  "  There's  a  fine  Prussian,  Pat !  "  he  cried.  "  She'll  give 
those  poor  mounseers  some  trouble  if  ever  she  comes  across 
them.  Bad  sailors,  those  mounseers.  Lord  !  what  a  fine  ship  ! " 

Patricia  went  over  to  him  and  looked  through  the  glass  too. 
"  Yes,  she's  a  beauty,"  she  said  as  she  handed  him  back  his 
telescope. 

Then  she  kissed  the  top  of  the  dear  bald  head,  as  was  her 
wont,  and  went  back  to  her  own  room  to  darn  her  skirt.  But 
she  sang  no  more  of  the  "  Minstrel  Boy."  A  chord  beside  thc^e 
of  his  own  harp  was  broken  for  to-day. 

Presently  her  uncle  called  to  her  again.  He  had  come  out  ol 
the  porch  and  was  standing  on  the  gravel-walk,  whence  he  could 
see  her  as  she  sat  by  the  window  sewing. 

"  I  have  it,  my  girl,"  he  said  in  a  cheery  voice.  This  was  Ins 
second  Eureka  within  the  hour. 

"Yes,  uncle?"  she  answered  looking  up,  her  bright  fact 
slightly  flushed. 

"  I  will  write  to  your  Aunt  Hamley  and  be  guided  by  her 
advice." 

Fora  few  seconds  Patricia  did  not  speak.  She  was  apparantlv 
too  much  occupied  with  a  rebellious  length  of  hair  that  would 
fall  over  her  face  to  be  able  to  give  her  full  mind  to  Aunt 
Hamley;  but  she  soon  cleared  her  eyes  and  said,  bravely 
enough  if  not  quite  in  her  usual  key :  "  Do  so,  dear ;  you  know 
best." 

"  I  knew  you  would  say  that,"  cried  Captain  Kemball  tri- 
umphantly. Bless  your  dear  innocent  heart.  I  can  read  you 
like  a  book  !  Always  the  same  steady  discipline  in  the  ship, 
and  the  old  uncle's  command  submitted  to  without  a  murmur. 
If  you  knew  how  we  old  folks  prize  this  ready  obedience  Pat! ' 

"  Well,  I  should  be  very  ungrateful  else,"  said  Patricia. 

"  And  that  would  not  be  like  you,"  he  said. 

"  I  hope  not,"  she  answered  gravely. 

"Now,  I'll  go  and  write  to  your  Aunt  Hamley,"  said  tlie 
Captain.  "  She'll  understand  this  matter,  and  1  do  not." 

On  which  he  turned  and  went  into  the  house,  and  Patricia 
heard  him  knocking  things  about  downstairs — opening  half  a 
dozen  drawers  tor  one,  fighting  over  split  pens  and  dried- up 


14  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

ink,  and  making  as  much  noise  and  as  many  preparations  be- 
fore settling  down  to  write  a  letter  of  a  few  lines  to  his  sister 
as  if  he  was  going  to  board  an  enemy. 

Now,  Aunt  Hamley  was  Patricia's  one  standing  dread  in 
life.  She  was  her  uncle's,  consequently  her  dead  father's,  only 
sister ;  but  since  her  marriage  with  Jabez  Hamley,  the  rich 
brewer  of  Milltown,  and  possessor  of  Abbey  Holme,  which  had 
relieved  him  from  the  necessity  of  her  further  support,  she  had 
kept  up  very  little  intercourse  with  her  surviving  brother, 
Both  men  had  been  objectionable  persons,  each  in  his  own  way, 
to  her  mind.  The  one  was  a  long-haired  artist  who  declined 
to  go  into  the  Church  on  conscientious  (she  called  them  un- 
conscientious)  grounds ;  the  other  was  a  sailor  of  demo 
cratic  habits,  with  no  manners  to  speak  of,  and  promotion 
cut  short  by  the  loss  of  his  limb.  Had  Reginald,  Patricia's 
father,  been  even  successful  in  his  questionable  career, 
and  employed  to  paint  the  Queen  and  the  Royal  Family, 
instead  of  being  a  wretched  dreamer  who  threw  away  his  time 
over  his  ideas — ideas,  indeed !  as  if  a  man  could  live  by  ideas  ! — 
or  had  Captain  Robert  not  met  with  that  accident  and  so  had 
gone  on  to  be  an  admiral  and  a  K.C.B.  like  his  father  before 
him,  she  would  not  have  minded  so  much  ;  but  an  unsuccessful 
painter  and  a  shunted  captain — they  were  vessels  if  not  of  wrath 
yet  of  very  unrefined  clay,  and  she  declined  handling  them  save 
at  a  distance. 

When  Reginald  died,  twelve  years  ago,  she  did  certainly  offer 
to  take  the  penniless  little  girl  to  her  own  childless  home  and 
bring  her  up  to  ladylike  habits  and  womanly  refinements.  She 
would  have  done  her  duty  by  her,  had  her  offer  been  accepted, 
and  she  would  have  liked  her  the  better  the  more  entire  her 
dependence  ;  but  the  Captain  elected  to  take  the  child  himself, 
and  Aunt  Hamley  had  never  quite  forgiven  him.  The  plan  had 
distressed  as  well  as  disaj>pointed  her.  Men  were  doubtful 
creatures  at  the  best,  in  her  opinion.  As  husbands,  she  held 
theoretically  by  the  doctrine  of  wifely  submission  and  obedi- 
ence, as  women  often  do  when  the  rod  wherewith  they  rule  is 
of  iron  sharply  pointed ;  but  outside  this  theoretical  premier- 
ship, beyond  doing  all  the  hard  work  of  the  world  that  women 
may  live  softly  and  fare  richly,  taking  care  of  their  ladies  in  a 
crowd,  looking  after  the  luggage  and  the  tickets  at  a  railway 


IN  THE  SUNSHINE.  16 

station,  and  managing  the  business  details  of  life,  she  did  not 
see  of  what  good  they  were.  When  it  came  to  an  old  sea- 
captain,  with  a  wooden  leg  and  only  his  half-pay  and  pension, 
taking  charge  of  a  little  girl  of  six,  and  never  a  lady  in  the 
establishment  to  see  that  her  hair  was  properly  brushed,  or  that 
her  boot-tags  were  neatly  tucked  in  and  her  clothes  nicely 
made,  she  was  more  disgusted  at  the  selfishness  and  home-help- 
lessness of  the  sex  than  she  had  ever  been  before  ;  and  this  was 
saying  much. 

This  refusal  to  let  her  have  Patricia  had  not  only  offended 
her  with  her  brother,  but  had  given  her  a  distaste  for  the  girl 
herself.  Though  she  had  never  seen  her  since  her  cherubic 
days  of  short  frocks  and  scratched  legs,  she  was  sure  that  she 
had  "  grown  up  undesirable  by  the  logical  necessity  of  her 
training  ; "  and  she  did  not  care  that  Dora  Drummond,  Mr. 
Hamley's  young  cousin  whom  she  had  adopted  in  default  of 
Patricia  after  her  brother's  refusal,  should  have  such  question- 
able companionship. 

"  She  must  be  dreadful,"  she  used  to  say  when  discussing  hei 
unknown  niece  in  family  conclave ;  and  both  Mr.  Hamley  and 
Dora  used  to  say,  "  Dreadful  indeed  ! "  in  concert. 

Neither  of  these  last-mentioned  persons  wanted  to  see  Mrs. 
Hamley  become  interested  in  her  niece.  To  Mr.  Hamley  the 
adoption  of  his  own  cousin  had  been  a  matter  of  intense  pride 
and  satisfaction  ;  and  such  a  cousin  too ! — fit  to  be  a  queen,  he 
used  to  think.  And  dear  Dora,  though  not  noticeably  jealous", 
naturally  wished  to  keep  her  standing  intact,  and  did  not  de- 
sire a  rival  Hence,  no  word  of  praise — that  was  impossible, 
for  no  one  knew  if  she  was  praiseworthy  or  not — but  no  word 
of  indulgent  hope  was  ever  coupled  with  Patricia's  name  at 
Abbey  Holme,  and  the  idea  of  her  was  associated  with  a  certain 
steadfast  disfavour  that  bore  its  fruits  in  the  time  to  come,  and 
made  itself  felt  even  now  in  the  time  at  hand. 

Patricia  had  thus  some  cause  for  the  sudden  dismay  that 
overcame  her  when  her  uncle  said  he  would  write  to  Aunt 
Hamley  for  her  advice  and  be  guided  by  it.  She  knew  by  in- 
tuition that  all  the  advice  they  would  have  from  Abbey  Holme 
would  be  hard  and  uncomfortable  so  lar  as  she  was  concerned  ; 
and  who  knows  }  perhaps  her  uncle  would  adopt  it,  whatever 
it  might  be,  even  if  it  hurt  himself  to  do  so.  He  had  hi* 


16  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

crotchets  at  times,  and  was  not  always  in  the  same  humour ; 
and  his  conscience  had  a  trick  of  self-torturing  when  he  was  not 
quite  well,  which  led  him  to  acts  of  pain  and  penance,  happily 
of  short  duration  if  severe  while  they  lasted. 

Right  or  wrong,  however,  this  idea  of  a  lady  companion  had 
taken  possession  of  him  ;  and  with  it  the  necessity  "  of  consult- 
ing his  sister  Hamley  in  a  matter  so  purely  out  of  his  line."  So 
acting  on  the  theory  of  the  providential  inspiration  of  his 
thought,  he  wrote  now  on  the  instant  to  Abbey  Holme,  at 
Mill  town,  as  has  been  said  ;  and  in  doing  so  felt  he  had  washed 
his  hands  of  half  his  responsibility  and  all  his  difficulty. 


"WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  1"  17 


CHAPTER  IIL 
"WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO, 

fHIS  was  the  first  break  in  Patricia's  life ;  a  break  as  yet 
only  potential,  not  actual.  But  it  brought  her  up  with 
a  round  turn,  as  she  herself  would  have  said,  and  made 
her  reflect  on  her  position,  for  the  first  time  seriously.  For  the 
first  time  too,  it  opened  the  gate  of  the  future,  and  gave  her  a 
glimpse  of  the  possibilities  lying  within. 

Her  uncle's  darling,  to  be  sure,  that  she  knew  she  was  ;  the 
light  of  his  days,  the  apple  of  his  eye,  He  could  no  more  get 
on  without  her  than  the  trees  and  the  flowers  in  the  garden 
could  live,  without  the  sun.  She  knew  all  this  well  enough; 
had  always  known  it  with  more  or  less  consciousness  from  the 
time  when  she  was  brought  to  the  cottage  in  her  little  black 
frock,  with  her  doll  in  her  arms,  and  Uncle  Robert,  whose  name 
was  associated  in  her  childish  mind  with  perennial  sugarplums 
and  almost  the  only  toys  she  ever  had,  had  taken  her  on  his 
knees  and  had  kissed  her  and  her  doll  too,  and  h.-ul  told  her  with 
a  husky  voice  that  he  would  be  her  father  now,  and  that  she 
was  to  be  a  good  girl  and  say  her  prayers,  and  never  do  any- 
thing behind  backs  she  was  afraid  of  all  the  world  seeing. 

From  that  time  she  had  taken  her  place  and  had  rooted. 
And  she  had  been  happy ;  who  indeed  happier  ?  It  had  been  just 
the  life  that  had  suited  best  with  her  physical  temperament  and 
her  moral  nature.  She  was  nothing  of  a  dreamer,  nor  yet  of  a 
casuist ;  si  e  was  contented  with  things  as  they  were  ;  things 
she  could  tmich  and  understand  without  going  to  their  roots  or 
questioning  eternal  causes.  She  liked  to  know  that  she  was 
doing  right,  but  she  did  not  care  to  analyse  her  own  sensations, 
nor  to  understand  exactly  where  her  right  might  have  broad- 
ened into  wrong.  Certainly  she  was  not  over  well  educated 
nor  yet  intellectually  inclined.  Hitherto  she  had  not  cared 
greatly  for  reading,  save  history,  which  was  true  and  therefore 

B 


ifc  "WHAT  worm  YOU  no, 

fascinating  enough ;  and  her  uncle,  had  not  made  her  read  mnch 
beside  the  Bible  and  Shakespeare,  which  last  he  had  Bowdler- 
ised  on  his  own  account  with  a  broad  pen  and  very  thick  ink. 
But  on  the  other  hand  she  had  learnt  a  good  deal  of  natural 
history,  and  what  she  knew  of  life  was  by  the  village  dramas 
acted  before  her  eyes,  not  by  theories  thought  out  by  others. 
As  yet  she  had  more  conscience  than  consciousness,  and  a 
moral  sense  keener  than  her  intellectual  perceptions. 

Her  physical  life,  too,  suited  her  as  exactly  as  the  rest.  Two- 
thirds  of  it  was  passed  in  the  open  air,  chiefly  in  strong  exer- 
cise ;  and  her  home  occupations  were  for  the  most  part  active 
—outside  her  needle-work  and  her  evening  backgammon  with 
her  uncle.  Her  health  was  perfect,  and  her  strength  greater 
than  the  strength  of  most  women,  save  such  as  work  in  the 
fields  or  the  like.  And  she  loved  to  use  it.  And  as,  happily 
for  her,  her  uncle  did  not  think  it  part  of  the  eternal  rule  of 
right  that  women  should  be  defrauded  of  their  inheritance  of 
health  and  development,  she  did  use  it,  and  to  good  purpose. 
Thus  it  was  that  she  never  knew  what  it  was  to  be  sick  or 
sorry,  depressed  or  doubtful,  out  of  heart  or  out  of  temper,  or 
at  cross  purposes  with  life  at  home  or  abroad. 

But  with  all  this  fullness  of  joy  in  the  present  her  future  was 
not  assured.  Her  uncle  was  not  her  father,  and  she  had  no 
claims  hereafter,  if  many  privileges  now.  If  anything  happened 
— she  did  not  realise  for  the  instant  what  could  happen — so 
that  she  had  to  turn  out  into  the  world,  what  could  she  do 
whereby  to  gain  her  own  bread  1  Absolutely  nothing,  unless 
her  physical  strength  might  turn  to  some  account ;  and  how 
could  it  ?  Women  were  wanted  for  fingers,  not  muscles ; 
clever  heads,  not  powerful  hands.  If  ever  that  day  of  need 
came,  of  all  girls  living  she,  so  rich  in  life's  best  wealth  now, 
would  be  the  most  to  be  despised  then.  It  came  to  her  with  a 
shock,  a  blow.  She  almost  started  as  she  saw  the  truth  of  her 
position,  and  felt  herself  for  the  moment  degraded  by  her  igno- 
rance, her  uselessness,  anywhere  but  where  she  was. 

A«  she  sat  by  the  window,  her  work  fallen  from  her  hands, 
her  eyes  fixed  on  the  sea  that  stretched  from  the  familiar  shore 
far  away  into  the  unknown,  so  like  her  own  life — ah,  so  like  all 
life  ! — she  tried  to  reason  it  out  fairly  and  to  convince  herself 
that  the  dear  old  man's  instinct  was  right.  She  had  been 


"WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  t"  19 

happy  and  she  had  been  well  loved,  as  also  she  had  loved.  She 
was  strong  and  not  afraid ;  and  she  knew  a  few  things  that 
were  of  use  in  their  way,  and  had  been  of  gieat  use  hitherto. 
But  she  wanted  more.  She  wanted  the  power  of  self-help  if 
she  needed  it ;  she  wanted  more  education  and  to  be  made 
more  like  other  women ;  and  she  wanced  to  be  taught  how  to 
make  money  in  the  time  to  come  when  there  would  be  no  one 
to  give  it  to  her.  For  must  not  t'nkt  time  come  in  the  ordinary 
course  of  things  ?  However  far  off — and  until  now,  when  she 
was  holding  this  innocent  parliament  with  herself  she  had 
never  once  foreseen  either  the  time  or  the  fact — was  it  not  to  be 
expected  that  her  dear  uncle  should  die  before  her  ?  And  if 
he  did,  she  would  be  left  absolutely  penniless.  He  had  nothing 
but  his  half-pay  and  pension ;  and  he  had  not  saved,  if  he  was 
not  in  debt.  He  had  told  her  so,  many  a  time  ;  and  how  could 
she  wish  him  to  save  when  distress  was  about,  and  the  poor 
men  and  destitute  women  and  children  had  to  be  fed  and 
clothed  in  the  hard  winters  of  bad  fishing  years  1  Perhaps  that 
was  what  he  was  thinking  of  now — the  real  meaning  of  this 
new  idea  of  his  about  his  sister's  advice  and  the  lady  companion. 
He  was  thinking  of  what  would  be  best  for  her  in  the  future 
when  he  should  not  be  with  her — dear,  good,  unselfish  uncle  ! 
And  she  had  shrunk  from  the  proposition — what  a  wicked  thing 
to  do !  Ah,  she  would  be  so  good  to-night !  She  would  show 
him  that  she  was  sorry  she  had  been  so  cowardly,  and  that  she 
was  ready  to  do  all,  accept  all,  he  proposed.  How  grieved  she 
would  be  when  she  was  alone  in  the  world  to  remember  her 
misdeeds  !  When  she  was  alone — when  the  supreme  decree 
had  gone  forth  1 

Like  a  picture  actually  before  her  she  suddenly  realised  the 
loss  of  her  second  father,  and  saw  him  lying  there  dead,  and 
gone  for  ever  from  her.  It  was  so  vivid,  she  felt  as  if  she  could 
have  touched  him.  With  a  kind  of  startled  cry  she  put  up 
her  hands  to  her  face,  and  broke  into  sobs  with  a  strange  and 
bitter  pain. 

If  her  uncle  had  seen  her  at  this  moment  he  would  have 
thought  she  was  crying  because  of  the  lady  companion,  which 
would  have  made  him  more  determined  than  before ;  and  he 
would  have  thought  her  temper  had  "  turned  nasty,"  though  that 
was  not  her  way ;  and  he  would  have  been  wounded  and  annoyed. 


20  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  T>O,  LOVE  ?  " 

No  one  however  did  see  her,  and  she  soon  dried  her  eyes 
again  ;  tears  not  being  luxuries  to  her  as  they  are  to  some — 
being  indeed  amongst  the  rarest  events  of  her  life. 

"  Crying  never  did  any  one  any  good  yet,"  she  said  to  her- 
self ;  "  and  I  had  better  make  my  dear  uncle  happy  while  he 
lives  than  sit  here  and  sob  over  his  death,  which  would  make 
him  unhappy,  and  will  not  be  till  I  am  an  old  woman.  And  I 
will  not  vex  him  any  more  about  this  lady  companion  who  is  to 
come.  I  don't  like  the  idea,  and  I  don't  want  her  for  pleasure  ; 
but  it  is  my  duty  to  be  obedient,  and  I  dare  say  she  will  teach 
me  a  lot  of  things  I  ought  to  know.  Oh,  I  dare  say  it  will  be 
all  right ! — only  I  hope  she  will  not  be  like  Miss  Pritchard 
who  always  looks  as  if  she  had  been  eating  green  gooseberries. 
Perhaps  she  will  be  a  darling.  Why  not  ?  There  are  more 
good  people  in  the  world  than  bad,  and  why  should  she  not  be 
one  of  them  ?  But  if  Aunt  Hamley  chooses  her  ?  Well  !  if 
Aunt  Hamley  chooses  her  she  will  perhaps  be  nice  all  the  same, 
and  at  any  rate  I  will  try  to  love  her  and  to  make  her  happy." 

On  which  she  shook  off  her  hair  from  her  face,  threw  back 
her  shoulders,  straightened  her  slender  figure  which  had 
drooped  together  as  she  had  pondered,  looked  out  frank  and 
brave  to  sea  and  sky  ;  and  then,  as  if  to  meet  her  brighter 
mood,  she  heard  a  firm,  swift,  manly  step  come  down  the  lane 
and  stop  at  the  little  wicket-gate  of  the  garden.  Immediately 
after  she  was  leaning  out  of  the  window  framed  in  by  the  crim- 
son foliage,  with  the  sunlight  pouring  on  her  like  a  golden  glory, 
laughing  to  a  fair-haired  young  man  in  a  sailor's  cap  and  jacket 
who  stood  on  the  lawn  below, 

"  Why,  Gordon !  I  thought  you  had  run  away  without  bid- 
ding us  good-bye  !  "  she  said. 

And  Gordon  Frere,  laughing  too,  answered  with  just  the 
faintest  dash  of  Irish  accent  in  his  voice  :  "  Ah  now,  Patricia, 
could  you  think  so  meanly  of  me  as  that !  " 

"  Well,  it  was  not  like  you,  certainly,"  said  Patricia  ;  "  but 
people  do  odd  things  sometimes,  you  know." 

"  I  don't  think  I  should  ever  do  anything  quite  so  odd  aa 
that,"  he  said. 

On  which  she  laughed  again,  and  said,  "  No  !  " 

Presently  the  Captain,  who  had  finished  his  letter  to  his 
sister  Hamley,  came  out  into  the  porch  again. 


"WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  I"  21 

"  Hullo,  Gordon  !  where  have  you  been  all  this  time  1 "  he 
said. 

"  That's  just  what  I  have  been  asking,"  said  Patricia. 

Not  that  she  had  in  words,  but  her  thoughts  had  meant  the 
same  thing. 

"  To  London,  sir,"  said  Gordon,  with  a  look  up  at  the  face 
framed  in  the  scarlet  leaves. 

"  Ay  1 — and  what  may  you  have  been  doing  there,  boy?  " 

"  It  was  only  an  uninteresting  bit  of  family  business  on  my 
coming  of  age,"  said  Gordon.  "  Lawyers  and  deeds,  and  no 
end  of  fees  to  pay  and  musty  old  courts  to  visit." 

"  Lawyers — sharks  !  "  said  Captain  Kemball  with  a  shudder. 

He  was  not  an  enlightened  old  gentleman,  though  he  was  a 
good  one ;  and  he  cherished  his  superstitions. 

"  Well,  perhaps,"  answered  the  young  man  hesitatingly. 
"  And  yet  it  saves  a  world  of  trouble  to  have  a  fellow  at  one's 
elbow  who  knows  everything  where  you  know  nothing,  and 
who  sees  so  jolly  far  ahead  !  It  is  like  telling  fortunes  by  the 
cards ;  and  when  that  old  family  lawyer  of  ours,  that  Mr. 
Fletcher,  whom  I  believe  I  once  mentioned  to  you — but  you 
know  him  for  yourself,  don't,  you,  sir  1  " 

"  To  be  sure  I  do.  The  Fletchers  come  from  Milltown  where 
I  was  born  and  bred,"  said  the  Captain,  "  and  that  Fletcher 
you  speak  of  has  been  our  family  lawyer  for  three  generations 
— at  least,  not  that  man,  but  the  house." 

"  I  thought  three  generations  a  long  time  for  one  life," 
laughed  Patricia. 

She  had  come  downstairs  while  they  were  talking,  and  was 
standing  now  by  the  door.  She  had  bathed  her  eyes  and  put 
up  her  hair  afresh,  and  had  even  gone  to  the  coquettish  length 
of  a  bright  bit  of  ribbon  about  her  throat  and  a  bow  of  the 
same  colour — dark  sailor-blue — among  the  glossy  brown  of  her 
luxuriant  hair  ;  and  as  she  stood  there  she  made  a  picture  more 
beautuul,  Gordon  thought,  than  ever  poet  imagined  or  painter 
drew. 

"We  must  mind  our  tackle  now  the  pilot's  aboard — eh, 
Gordon  1  "  said  the  Captain,  looking  at  her  proudly. 

And  Gordon  said  "Yes,"  with  mil  meaning. 

"  I  am  glad  you  know  the  Fletchers,"  then  said  the  Captain. 
"One  likes  one's  friends  to  be  in  good  hands.  There  is  a 


23  "  \VH  AT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

Catherine  Fletcher  too,"  he  added,  looking  with  an  odd  kind 
of  expression  at  Patricia.  "  She  was  a  beauty  in  her  young 
days.  All  Milltown  was  mad  after  her.  "  She  and  her  brother 
Henry  live  still  at  Milltown,  I  believe.  He  was  a  doctor,  but 
he  left  the  profession  when  the  old  man  died  ;  and  a  fine  fellow 
he  used  to  be,  I  remember." 

"  So  is  Mr.  Fletcher  in  London,"  said  Gordon  ;  "  and  so 
sharp  and  clever !  When  he  used  to  come  in  with  his  mathe- 
matical way  of  putting  things  that  I  thought  were  all  different, 
as  I  said,  it  was  like  fortune-telling  somehow.  I  know  he  used 
to  make  me  feel  the  most  of  a  fool  I  have  ever  felt." 

"  Eh  ?  Then  he  must  have  known  his  alphabet,"  said  the 
Captain  waggishly  ;  and  Gordon  laughed  and  blushed. 

He  was  a  fine  young  fellow,  brave  and  strong,  but  not  be- 
yond blushing  like  a  girl  on  occasions. 

"  True  all  the  same,"  he  continued.  "  What  I  thought  was 
as  plain  as  that  two  and  two  make  four,  he  showed  me  had 
this  bearing  and  that  meaning  I  had  never  seen,  and  that  my 
two  and  two  made  five  or  six  or  nothing  at  all !  I  used  to  feel 
in  a  foreign  land  in  that  old  office  of  his,  where  I  knew  neither 
the  language  nor  the  country  and  had  to  walk  as  if  blindfold, 
under  guidance." 

"  Long  may  it  remain  a  foreign  country  to  you  and  us  all !  " 
said  the  Captain  fervently. 

"  I  think  there  must  be  a  born  antipathy  between  sailors  and 
lawyers,"  put  in  Patricia. 

"  Land-sharks  and  sea-sharks,"  said  her  uncle  quite  gravely ; 
"  and,  of  the  two,  the  land-sharks  are  the  worst." 

"  But  this  special  shark  of  Gordon's,  this  Mr.  Fletcher,  he 
seems  to  be  harmless  enough  t"  she  said. 

"Fletcher1? — yes,  he's  about  the  best  you'll  find,"  her  uncle 
answered.  "  If  he  was  not  one  of  the  devil's  advocates  I  should 
say  he  was  about  as  good  a  man  as  ever  walked  on  the  face  of 
the  earth.  He  has  a  strain  of  honesty,  that  man,  which  has 
stood  in  his  way  more  than  once  ;  he'll  never  make  his  fortune 
out  of  the  ruin  of  other  people's." 

"  He'll  do  better — he'll  deal  justly  by  other  people's,"  said 
Gordon  ;  and  then  the  conversation  dropped. 

But  it  left  on  Patricia  a  cheery  impression.  She  was  glad 
that  Gordon  had  an  honest  man  for  his  legal  adviser  when  he 


"  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  !  "  23 

had  business  on  hand,  a  man  he  could  trust  as  the  caretaker  of 
his  fortunes  while  he  was  away  at  sea  doing  his  duty  to  his 
country,  which  would  not  be  half  grateful  enough,  she  used  to 
think,  if  he  came  to  grief  in  her  service  like  her  uncle,  or  mourn 
him  as  he  deserved  to  be  mourned  if  he  went  down  altogether 
in  the  fight. 

She  and  Gordon  were  great  friends.  When  she  spoke  of 
him,  and  was  conscious  that  she  had  to  account  for  the  familiar 
terms  on  which  they  were  t6gether,  as  happened  sometimes,  if 
rarely,  she  invariably  said,  "  We  have  been  brought  up  to- 
gether, like  brother  and  sister."  And  this  was  true.  He  had 
been  educated  at  Mr.  Ramsey's,  the  clergyman  who  lived  at 
St.  John  s  and  served  Barsands  as  well ;  while  his  mother  and 
sisters  did  battle  with  small  means  and  large  pretensions  in 
Germany,  And  as  the  journey  was  expensive  and  the  Frere 
finances  limited,  he  had  seldom  gone  over  to  them  ;  a  big, 
healthy,  English  boy,  destined  for  the  sea  and  as  wild  as  a  colt, 
not  being  the  kind  of  thing  specially  desired  by  a  nervous 
woman  in  a  small  foreign  apartment,  with  a  couple  of  showy- 
looking  daughters  to  dress  and  marry.  By  which  it  had  come 
about  that  the  captain  had  taken  possession  of  him  in  his  holi- 
days, and  Patricia  had  learned  to  regard  him  as  a  brother,  or 
something  very  like  one. 

When  he  first  went  away  to  the  Britannia  training  ship  she 
felt  as  if  she  had  lost  part  of  her  very  self.  She  was  but  a 
little  lassie  at  the  time,  but  she  always  remembered  how  she 
had  cried  when  he  turned  the  corner,  and  she  saw  him  for 
the  last  time  out  on  the  Penrose  Koad,  waving,  his  cap  ;  and 
how  for  days  and  days  after  there  seemed  to  •  be  no  sun  left 
in  the  sky.  Now  she  was  glad  he  had  chosen  the  profession. 
Naturally,  to  her  mind  it  was  the  finest  a  man  could 
choose.  Had  not  her  dear  uncle,  and  her  grandfather 
before  him,  been  its  shining  lights  ?  For  though  when  he  had 
got  fairly  afloat  it  took  him  away  so  much,  yet  when  he  did 
come  home  —St.  John's  Vicarage  and  Holdfast  Cottage  were 
always  "  home  "  to  the  poor  boy  who  had  never  known  any 
other — it  sent  him  back  with  such  an  atmosphere  of  youthful 
heroism  about  him,  such  a  sense  of  dangers  braved  and  diffi- 
culties overcome  and  a  noble  life's  work  nobly  begun,  that  she 
could  not  grudge  the  separation  which  had  borne  such  glorious 


24  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  no,  LOVE  ?  •• 

fruits  already,  and  which  was  to  bear  others  even  more  glorious 
in  the  days  to  come.  She  would  not,  if  she  could,  have  kept 
Gordon  •'  moidering  "  away  his  youth  at  Barsands.  Pleasant 
as  it  was  to  have  him  as  her  companion  when  she  tore  about 
the  country  on  her  shaggy,  ill-groomed  pony,  or  beat  up  against 
the  wind  in  the  Mermaid,  she  knew  that  a  life  of  idleness, 
though  ever  so  delightful,  was  not  the  right  thing  for  a  man. 
And  it  gave  her  a  little  joy  to  feel  that  for  his  good  she  could 
conquer  her  own  desires,  and  even  rejoice  at  the  cause  if  she 
grieved  over  the  fact  of  their  separation.  But  let  him  be  gone 
as  long  as  he  would,  slie  was  ever  entirely  loyal  to  him  in  his 
absence,  never  forgot  him  in  her  prayers,  never  took  any  one 
else  to  be  her  brother  in  his  stead,  but  always  kept  him  first  in 
his  generation  in  her  heart,  as  beseemed  a  steadfast  and  affec- 
tionate sifter. 

She  IOT  ed  him  as  young  things  of  the  right  kind  do  love  each 
other,  without  fear  or  introspection.  She  scarcely  could  re- 
member the  time  when  Gordon  Frere  was  not  part  of  her  life, 
and  when  she  did  not  love  him  as  much  as  she  loved  her  uncle, 
if  differently.  It  was  not  a  thing  to  think  about  at  all.  It 
was  a  tact ;  just  as  much  as  sisterhood  or  daughterhood  is  a 
fact.  Gordon  was  Gordon  to  her ;  and  when  she  had  said  that 
she  had  said  all. 

And  yet  this  time  she  had  been  conscious  of  the  slightest 
possible  little  change  in  their  relations.  It  Was  not  coolness — 
by  no  means  coolness  ;  but  just  a  dash  of  shyness  and  reserve, 
as  if  there  was  something  of  which  they  were  a  little  afraid  to 
speak,  and  as  if  they  both  felt  they  must  be  more  careful  some- 
how than  they  used  to  be.  But  it  was  so  slight  a  change  that 
Patricia  was  resolute  not  to  accept  it ;  and  as  Gordon,  on  his 
side,  seemed  to  struggle  against  the  shadowy  influence  in  the 
best  way  he  could,  the  old  joyous  harmony  that  had  been  for 
so  many  years  unbroken  between  them  still  went  on,  and  this 
visit  of  the  bright  young  sailor  to  his  friends  at  home  was  as 
happy  as  all  the  others  had  been. 

"  Any  news  when  you  join  1"  asked  Captain  KembalL 

Gordon  looked  at  Patricia ;  Patricia  looked  at  him. 

"  In  three  days,"  he  said,  and  turned  his  face  to  the  sea. 

"  Oh,  Gordon  !  that  is  a  month  too  soon  !  "  cried  Patricia  in 
frank  sorrow.  "  I  thought  you  said  you  were  to  stay  till  the 
third  week  in  November  ? " 


"  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,   LOVE  t  "  25 

"  So  I  did ;  but  the  Lords  have  ordered  us  away  the  third 
week  in  October,  you  see,"  he  answered. 

"  What  a  pity !  We  do  miss  you  so  when  you  go.  It  seems 
to  get  worse  every  time  ! "  said  Patricia. 

The  young  man's  eyes  glistened.  "  Well,  I  am  glad  you  are 
so  sorry,  Patricia  !  "  he  said  frankly. 

"  You  are  ?  What  a  horrid  speech — and  how  Irish  !  "  she 
laughed. 

"  Isn't  it  better  than  to  go  and  think  not  a  living  soul  on 
shore  regrets  you1?"  asked  Gordon  looking  at  her  earnestly. 

"Yes,  Pat,"  said  the  Captain  taking  up  the  strain;  "you 
don't  know  what  it  is  to  keep  watch  on  a  dark  night,  and  be 
thinking  of  the  dear  ones  at  home,  and  knowing  that  they  are 
thinking  of  you,  and  feeling  their  blessed  hearts  so  pitiful  to 
hear  the  wind  blow." 

"  It's  hard  lines  for  the  poor  fellows  who  have  no  one  to  care 
a  button  for  them,"  put  in  Gordon  ;  ''  aud  I,  for  one,  don't 
envy  them.  So  youUl  please  keep  on  being  sorry,  Patricia,  do 
you  hear  ? "' 

"  Well,  Gordon,  I  suppose  we  shall^said  Patricia,  with  her 
hand  on  her  uncle's  shoulder.  "  We  miss  you  horribly  when 
you  go  away,  don't  v/e,  uncle  1  Life  isn't  the  same  thing  with- 
out you,  and  you  will  take  away  the  last  of  the  summer  this 
time.  However" — and  she  sighed.  The  sigh  meant  resigna- 
tion and  "  what  must  be,  must  be." 

"  Don't  make  a  Molly  of  him,  Pat,"  said  the  old  Captain, 
going  into  the  house. 

"  It's  good  news  you  tell  me  ;  I  wouldn't  have  it  altered ;  I 
like  you  to  miss  me  when  I  go,"  continued  Gordon  gravely. 

Without  knowing  why,  Patricia  suddenly  felt  herself  grow 
pale,  and  an  odd  kind  of  tremor  passed  over  her. 

"  I  hear  Sarah  with  the  tea-things ;  come  and  have  some  tea," 
she  said  abruptly. 

"  All  right.  And  you  will  sing  me  '  Dermot  asthore '  after  V 
asked  Gordon  in  a  rather  lower  voice  than  usual ;  for  he  too, 
generally  spoke  as  if  a  northwester  was  blowing  in  his  teeth. 

"  Yes,  it  you  wish  it,"  was  the  reply. 

''  I  do  wish  it,  very  much,  Patricia.  I  want  to  hear  '  Der- 
mot '  and  ;  What  would  you  do,  Love  ?  '  and  when  1  am  toss- 
ing about  at  sea  I  shall  remember  them  and  you— and  thja 
evening," 


26  "WHAT  WOULD  rOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  Why  this  evening  specially  1 "  asked  Patricia: 

But  though  she  tried  to  speak  in  her  usual  frank  way,  some- 
thing— it  was  almost  like  wool — seemed  to  have  got  into  her 
throat  that  changed  the  quality  of  her  voice,  even  to  her  own 
ears.  Neither  could  she  look  at  Gordon  as  she  was  accustomed 
to  look  at  him.  She  felt  bashful,  and  as  if  her  eyes  refused  to 
go  his  way.  Altogether  it  was  uncomfortable,  and  she  felt  in- 
clined to  run  away  and  hide  herself  where  he  could  not  find 
her.  Nor  was  he  quite  the  same  to  her.  A  trouble,  dim, 
formless,  but  real,  seemed  to  have  fallen  between  them ;  and 
yet  it  was  not  the  trouble  of  unkindness. 

"  Why  ?  I  will  not  tell  you  now,  Patricia ;  but  some  day  I 
will,"  said  Gordon,  looking  at  the  gold  band  of  his  cap  as  if  it 
was  something  he  had  never  seen  before,  and  sinking  his  voice, 
which  trembled. 

"  Mysteries  ]  oh,  I  hate  mysteries  ! "  she  cried,  making  a 
sudden  effort  to  conquer  her  strange  sensations,  and  laughing 
in  a  way  scarcely  natural  to  her,  as  with  an  odd  feeling  of 
escape  she  ran  into  the  dining-room — where  she  mismanaged 
the  tea,  or,  as  the  Captain  called  it,  "spoilt  the  brew." 

As  she  did  not  know  very  well  what  she  was  about  she 
scalded  herself,  which  effectually  awakened  her  from  the  con- 
fusion of  her  state ;  and  she  did  not  get  entangled  again  that 
evening,  not  even  when  she  had  finished  "  What  would  you  do, 
Love  ? "  and  Gordon  had  asked  her,  with  his  honest  blue  eyes 
raised  fully  into  hers,  "  Is  that  what  you'd  do,  Patricia,  to  any 
poor  fellow  who  loved  you  and  had  bad  chances  1 "  and  she  had 
answered  heartily,  "  Yes,  T  would,  Gordon." 

"You'd  not  believe  an  ill  word,  and  not  be  frightened  by  a 
cold  fortune  1"  he  asked. 

"  I  ?  No !  not  all  the  world  could  turn  me  from  one  I 
loved  ! "  she  said  warmly. 

"  I  believe  you,  Patricia  ! "  said  Gordon  ;  and  his  face  beamed 
with  something  more  tender  than  a  smile,  deeper  than  mere 
pleasure.  "  You  are  the  truest-hearted  girl  that  ever  stepped. 
Man  or  woman  would  be  safe  with  you  ! " 

"  Gordon,  how  can  you  talk  such  nonsense  ! "  said  Patricia. 

But  her  cheeks  flushed  with  pleasure,  and  she  felt  very  happy 
that  he  thought  her  so  true-hearted. 


THE    "  MERMAID."  J7 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  "MERMAID." 

ATURALLY  the  chief  amusement  at  Barsands  was 
boating,  for  those  who  owned  anything  that  would 
float,  between  a  tub  and  a  cockleshell ;  though  for  the 
matter  of  that,  there  was  only  the  Captain  to  keep  a  pleasure- 
boat  at  all — the  rest  being  fishing  and  seine-boats  only,  of 
larger  or  smaller  dimensions.  And,  naturally  again,  Captain 
Kemball,  and  Gordon  Frere  when  he  was  on  shore,  were  never 
happier  than  when  they  were  cruising  about  the  rocks  and 
islands  which  made  this  special  reach  of  coast  so  dangerous. 

Patricia  was  generally  with  them,  in  accordance  with  the 
Captain's  idea  that  the  right  kind  of  feminine  education  was  to 
make  women  as  brave  as  men,  heroically  indifferent  to  danger 
and  clever  in  getting  out  of  it ;  courage  and  presence  of  mind 
being  the  qualities  he  most  admired  after  truth  and  loyalty. 
And  Patricia  was  really  a  very  good  seawoman.     She  could 
handle  the  tiller  ropes  as  well  as  if  she  had  been  a  pilot  on  her 
own  account,  and  she  knew  every  shoal,  and  rock,  and  current 
as  accurately  as  if  she  had  been  the  hydrographer  of  the  station 
Her  uncle  used  to  call  her  "the  mermaid"  sometimes;  and 
when  he  hit  on  the  idea,  he  re-christened  his  boat,  which,  unti 
then  had  been  the  Young  Holdfast,  the  Mermaid,  too,  in  honou 
of  her.     He  was  fond  of  innocent   little  jokes,  decent  man 
and  one  of  them  was   to  declare  gravely  to  such    siraut**4" 
as  he  might  have  seen  gaping  at  hei  pranks  in  the  watftr  --  f i 
she  could  swim  like  a  fish — that  he  had  -seen  many  iiiaitutvi 
in  his  time ;  shoals  of  them  about  the  Pacific  Isles ;  AH  t  tt» 
this  creature  there  was  half  a  one,  web-footed  inside  h-j  »r,.*t, 
and  with  the  neatest  little  uorsa   nn,  just  like  a  lnl}'«  !ri!. 
between  her  shoulders.     And  ho  always  maintained  that  »un»«* 
of  them — benighted  Loridoiers  for  the  most  part — looked  as  t/ 
they  believed  him.     So  th  it,  instead  of  being  in  the  way  on 
board  the  Mermaid,  if  a  gale  came  on  and  they  had  to  dodge 


28  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  ' 

the  wind  to  slip  by  the  Gridiron,  she  was  of  as  much  use,  save 
in  absolute  strength  of  muscle,  as  the  best  A.B.  on  the  Admi- 
ralty books. 

.The  next  day  the  three  went  out  for  a  long  cruise.  It  was  a 
bright  breezy  day,  just  such  as  yesterday  had  been,  only  per- 
haps more  brilliant  and  more  vigorous  ;  with  a  full  wind  that 
sent  the  little  boat  merrily  along,  and  just  enough  sea  on  to 
make  her  "  dance  like  a  lady,"  said  Gordon,  as  she  slipped  from 
wave  to  wave  and  laid  over  to  the  breeze  till  her  sail  dipped 
into  the  water.  The  "  white  horses  "  were  out,  but  they  only 
gave  greater  animation  to  the  scene  ;  and  they  were  not  so 
much  horses  as  ponies,  said  the  Captain,  bonny  little  beasts, 
sent  out  by  Neptune  to  view  the  world  and  report  below  ;  but 
to  see  them  breaking  and  leaping  beneath  the  wind,  and  to  see 
how  the  Mermaid  danced  and  courtesied  as  they  met  her,  would 
have  made  a  landsman  shudder.  As  it  was,  it  was  a  sea  and 
sky  which  to  sailors  and  sea-birds  were  perfection. 

There  was  no  wool  in  Patricia's  throat  to-day,  no  mist  before 
her  eyes.  The  strong  north-east  wind  seemed  to  have  cleared 
both  her  and  Gordon  from  that  formless  trouble  of  the  night 
before,  and  the  happy  companionship  they  had  always  known, 
affectionate  and  unconscious,  had  come  back  as  if  it  had  never 
received  a  check. 

Long  after,  both  Gordon  and  Patricia  remembered  this 
morning  as  one  of  the  golden  memories  of  their  youth.  It  was 
Ithe  last  sail  the  pleasant  triad  had  together ;  the  last  time  the 
Captain  did  the  ordering  arid  Gordon  the  hard  work — which, 
however,  was  not  very  hard — while  she,  with  the  ropes  in  her 
hand,  steered  close  or  clear,  luffed,  fell  off  a  point,  or  put  the 
helm  hard  a-port  as  she  noted  the  signs  of  sea  and  land  ;  the 
last  time  she  watched  the  sail  flap  heavily  against  the  mast  as 
they  -shifted  the  boom  and  she  set  the  tiller  shai  p,  then  felt  the 
seaman's  glow  of  satisfaction  as  she  saw  the  canvas  slowly  fill, 
in  sign  that  the  little  boat  had  not  missed  stays,  and  that  they 
were  off  on  another  tack,  cheating  the  wind  and  zigzagging 
defiantly  right  in  its  very  teeth  ;  the  last  time  she  served  out 
their  simple  dinners  on  the  cuddy  rooi — she  eating  hers  stand- 
ing while  the  Captain  took  the  tiller  ropes  for  a  spell,  and 
looked  at  his  boat  and  his  niece  with  about  equal  admiration. 
How  well  the  one  sailed,  how  grandly  the  other  grew  i  How 


THE    "MERMAID."  29 

the  new  white  canvas  of  the  Mermaid  filled  and  bellied  with 
that  perfect  line,  in  its  way  as  beautiful  as  the  curve  of  a  swan's 
neck  or  the  slant  of  a  bird's  wing  !  And  how  prettily  the  wind 
caught  the  girl's  dress  and  eddied  it  into  billowy  wreaths  like 
a  purple  cloud,  while  it  tore  her  bright  brown  hair  from  its 
slender  fastenings,  and  blew  it  in  shining  tangles  across  her 
face! 

Beautiful  Patricia  always  was.  Her  enemies,  if  she  had  had 
any,  must  have  confessed  this  ;  but  to-day  she  surpassed  herself. 
Even  her  uncle,  who  had  nothing  of  that  sickly  sentimentality 
which  moons  and  maunders  over  a  woman's  beauty  as  if  it  was 
a  thing  to  reverence  like  a  virtue,  and  who  cared  more  for 
what  she  was  than  for  how  she  looked — even  he,  as  we  have 
said,  was  filled  with  a  strangely  vivid  sense  of  the  nymph-like 
splendour  of  her  loveliness  as  she  stood  there  so  young  and 
fresh,  so  full  of  happy  life,  and  so  unconscious  of  her  charm  1 
Gordon  Frere  made  a  surreptitious  sketch  in  his  pocket-book, 
of  which  she,  intent  on  an  enormous  sandwich,  was  in  nowise 
aware.  She  nearly  caught  him  though,  as  she  suddenly  looked 
back  to  the  little  world  on  board  from  her  alternate  contempla- 
tion of  the  horizon  and  her  hunch  of  bread.  But  he  smuggled 
away  the  book  in  time,  and  all  she  saw  were  two  blue  eyes 
looking  at  her  roguishly  and  a  handsome  face  lighted  up  by  a 
smile.  Then  she  smiled  too,  in  her  responsive  way,  and  the 
sketch  never  got  discovered  nor  completed.  Gordon  scarcely 
needed  it  to  remind  him  of  the  girl  or  the  boat,  or  his  own 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  this  day. 

There  was  something  that  seemed  to  move  them  all  to  remain 
out  as  long  as  possible  on  this  cruise.  It  was  one  of  those  days 
which  make  an  ineffaceable  impression  on  the  memory,  and 
which  seem  different  altogether  from  others.  There  are  times 
when  the  fields  and  the  sea  and  the  sky  seem  nothing  more 
than  a  mere  face — something  to  look  at,  to  admire* if  one  will, 
but  not  to  understand,  and  not  to  remember  with  special  de- 
light ;  and  there  are  days  which  seem  to  show  us  something 
beyond  and  behind,  and  to  put  us  in  harmony  with  the  inner 
heart  of  nature.  And  these  we  never  forget,  nor  the  aspect  of 
the  world  as  we  looked  at  it  then.  To  Patricia  it  was  as  if  the 
universe  had  been  swept  and  garnished  airesh,  and  life  had  just 
begun,  and  all  things  been  made  beautiful  and  new  since  fc^e 


30  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?  " 

sun  broke  over  the  hills  this  morning.  There  were  no  ghosts  of 
dead  loves,  no  sorrows,  no  sighings  about  earth  and  sky  to-day. 
It  might  have  been  the  first  day  of  creation,  for  its  sense  of 
buoyant  freshness  to  her — the  first  hour  of  time  when  was  no 
Fast  with  its  tears  and  funeral  faces,  only  the  glad  Present  and 
the  hope  of  the  Future  ;  and  she  might  have  been  Eve  ere  yet 
the  Serpent  had  whispered  to  her,  and  before  the  flaming  sword 
had  bet?n  drawn. 

In  Gordon's  mind  ran  a  strange  confusion  of  texts  about  the 
sons  of  men  and  the  daughters  of  God  that  came  down  to  them, 
and  it  did  not  trouble  hirn  that  he  read  the  words  wrong- 
handed  ;  while  the  Captain's  heart  went  back  with  his  memory 
some  forty  years  and  more,  when  the  world  used  LO  be  newly 
swept  and  garnished  for  him  too,  and  the  sons  of  men  fell  in 
with  the  daughters  of  God  on  the  roads  by  which  he  travelled. 

So  they  sailed  and  laughed  and  talked  and  had  long  spells  of 
silence ;  sometimes  of  a  silence  that  meant  dreaming,  sometimes 
only  watching ;  while  the  little  Mermaid  ran  before  the  wind 
with  a  clean  sweep  and  a  light  pair  of  heels,  and  shook  and 
swayed  and  tossed  impatiently,  as  they  put  her  about  and  forced 
her  out  of  her  natural  course,  and  art  and  science  conquered 
nature  and  the  elements  in  the  old  way.  And  now  it  was  getting 
dusk  when  they  finally  put  her  head  straight  for  Barsands,  and 
steered  for  home. 

As  the  evening  drew  in  the  weather  changed.  The  bright 
flecked  sky  became  thick  and  grey,  the  sun  went  down  behind 
a  heavy  bank  of  purple  clouds,  the  wind  rose,  and  the  rain  began 
to  fall.  A  storm  was  coming  up  with  the  tide,  and  the  tide  was 
running  swift  and  high.  This  dangerous  caost-line,  full  of  sharp 
sunken  rocks  and  strong  currents  as  it  was,  needed  both  clever 
seamanship  and  clear  weather  to  render  it  practicable  ;  and  it 
was  a  constantly  recurring  triumph  in  a  small  way  when  the 
Captain  and  his  niece  brought  the  Mermaid  safe  into  harbour 
again,  and  defeated  for  another  time  Mother  Jose's  standing  pro- 
phecy, that  the  pair  of  them  would  be  drowned  one  of  these 
fine  days ;  and  then  where  would  they  be  1 

This  time  there  seemed  a  desperate  chance  that  the  prophecy 
might  be  nearer  fulfilment  than  was  desirable.  But  the  party  on 
board  did  not  take  much  heed.  They  put  the  boat  about,  and 
she  answered  gallantly  to  the  helm.  So  far  well;  but  the 


THE    "MERMAID."  3] 

freshening  gale  obliged  them  presently  to  close-reef  their  sail,  and 
then  they  began  to  look  somewhat  anxiously  to  their  stays  and 
bolts.  Even  such  a  slight  press  of  canvas  as  iheMermaid  carried 
was  soon  more  than  she  could  bear  in  the  weather  that  had 
come  on;  and  now  their  only  course  was  to  make  all  snug,  to 
steer  well  and  carefully,  edg  /  away  before  the  wind,  and  to  do 
the  best  they  could  with  a  chtticult  job. 

Moment  by  moment  things  looked  worse.  The  evening 
settled  down  darker  and  wilder  at  every  quarter  of  an  hour  that 
passed.  The  wind,  which  had  backed  sharp  from  north-east  to 
south-west,  had  risen  to  a  gale  setting  dead  in-shore,  and  the 
tide  and  the  currents  swept  along  with  tumultuous  violence. 
Already  the  Gridiron,  that  dreaded  reef  of  rocks,  was  one  line 
of  boiling  surf  from  end  to  end  ;  and  the  tide  was  not  yet  more 
than  half  high  ;  and  the  cliffs  were  dim  with  the  spray  that  was 
cast  up  about  them.  But  while  they  steered  well,  and  the  boat 
obeyed  the  helm,  they  were  in  no  real  peril ;  though,  sometimes 
buried  in  the  trough,  sometimes  flung  up  to  the  crest  of  the 
giant  waves,  the  little  Mermaid  looked  as  if  her  last  hour  had 
come,  and  as  if  she  could  not  possibly  live  in  such  a  sea. 

On  they  went,  each  face  gradually  getting  graver,  each  heart 
more  anxious,  but  the  bonny  boat  holding  her  own  bravely, 
when  suddenly  a  tremendous  wave,  breaking  athwart,  tore  away 
her  rudder  and  left  her  masterless  in  the  storm.  As  the  sea 
struck  her  she" gave  a  lurch  and  heeled  over  on  her  side  ;  but 
she  righted  herself  in  time,  and  rose  gallantly  to  the  wave, 
trembling  in  every  inch  of  her  as  she  went  forward  with  a  leap 
like  a  race-horse  touched  by  the  whip  and  the  spur.  Gordon 
did  what  he  could  to  utilise  the  sweep  as  a  rudder ;  but  the  sea 
was  too  strong ;  and  after  trying  all  the  expedients  open  to  them 
they  were  forced  to  let  things  be,  and  to  take  counsel  of  hope 
and  courage  only.  On  she  went,  driven  with  a  force  they  could 
neither  check  nor  resist.  Under  bare  poles  as  she  was,  the 
storm  swept  her  before  it  like  a  leaf  in  a  mill-race.  They  were 
powerless  to  prevent  or  to  guide.  Hitherto,  man  and  science 
had  been  the  masters,  now  the  elements  were  supreme  and  man 
was  the  slave,  and  too  probably,  the  victim. 

The  boat  drifted  fast,  and  the  precious  moments  flew  with  it. 
If  only  they  could  weather  Penthill  Point,  where  many  a  good 
ship's  bones  lay  bleaching  at  the  bottom,  the  wind  would 


32  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

serve  them  well ;  they  would  leave  the  Gridiron  clear  to  the 
left  and  be  blown  straight  into  Barsands  harbour.  Would  they 
weather  it  t  Yes,  if  the  wind  changed  but  hajif  a  point,  so  as 
to  set  them  straight  for  the  harbour ;  no,  if  it  blew  dead  in- 
shore, as  it  blew  now ;  and  no,  too,  if  it  changed  more  than  that 
half-point,  for  then  they  would  fall  on  the  Gridiron.  But  it 
did  not  change.  It  carried  them  on  to  their  destruction  straight 
as  an  arrow  flies.  Every  wave  that  rose  bore  them  nearer, 
every  moment  of  time  that  rushed  into  eternity  drove  them 
closer  to  the  cliff,  and  diminished  their  chances  of  escape  by  so 
much.  It  was  an  ugly  look-out  ;  and  they  knew  their  danger. 

Not  a  word  was  spoken.  The  two  men,  with  the  girl  be- 
tween them,  sat  in  the  stern,  holding  on  by  the  gunwale  and 
lightly  lashed  as  well ;  a  quiet,  resolute,  silent  triad  ;  each  as 
brave  as  the  other,  and  each  thinking  for  the  others,  "  If  only 
they  could  be  saved,  I  should  be  content  to  die  !  "  Sea  birds 
wheeled  and  screamed  above  their  heads,  and  dipped  their 
slanting  wings  in  the  foam  that  flew  over  the  masthead,  as  the 
crests  of  the  waves  were  cut  as  if  by  a  knife  and  scattered  into 
plumes  and  streamers  of  spray.  The  wind  howled  through  the 
darkening  sky,  and  whistled  shrilly  among  the  straining  shrouds; 
and  the  huge  billows  came  thundering  after  the  Mermaid  as  she 
flew  wildly  before  them,  and  overtaking  her,  deluged  her  with 
water  that  swept  her  deck  from  end  to  end,  and  tried  the  tem- 
per of  the  wood  and  hemp  and  iron  of  which  her  life  had  been 
made.  Faster  and  faster  she  drove  before  the  gale,  caught  by 
the  wind  and  the  tide  and  hurried  dead  upon  the  Point.  They 
seemed  to  be  drawn  as  if  by  a  magnet  in  this  mad  race  of  theirs 
with  death  ;  as  if  they  were  being  hunted  by  the  wind  and 
waves  behind  them.  And  then  suddenly  the  huge  black  cliff 
stood  up  sharp  and  square  before  them,  and  the  spray  cast  off 
from  the  face  fell  back  on  them  in  a  blinding  shower. 

"  Hold  on  !  "  shouted  the  Captain. 

And  at  the  word  came  a  shock  that  threw  them  all  forward, 
and  a  tearing,  ripping  noise,  that  told  its  own  tale. 

"  Keep  steady,  girl !  There's  a  God  in  heaven  ! "  he  said, 
passing  his  arm  around  Patricia's  waist  as  the  boat  reeled  back, 
quivering  at  the  blow. 

Divining  more  than  hearing  what  he  said,  for  the  wind  and 
the  waves  drowned  all  other  sounds  but  their  own,  Patricia  put 


THE   "MERMAID."  33 

her  arm  about  him  too;  but  she  did  not  speak.  Then  she 
turned  to  Gordon,  and  smiled  with  a  kind  of  sad  but,  brave 
cheerfulness  as  she  held  out  her  other  hand  to  him. 

He  took  it  and  pressed  it  between  both  his  own  ;  but  he 
could  not  answer  back  her  smile.  His  handsome  ruddy  face 
was  set  and  blanched,  his  brows  were  contracted,  his  teeth 
clenched  tight.  Brave  as  he  was — a  man  who  emphatically  had 
never  known  physical  fear — he  was  sick  with  terror  now.  Not 
for  himself  ;  he  would  have  died  resolutely  enough  for  his  own 
part ;  but  it  seemed  to  take  the  manhood  out  of  him  sornehcw, 
to  think  of  her  perishing  before  his  eyes,  and  he  unable  to  save 
her  by  his  strength  or  by  his  own  sacrifice.  There  was  no  help 
for  it.  The  strongest  swimmer  that  ever  lived  could  not  have 
breasted  the  breakers  foaming  over  the  rocks  at  Peuthill  Point  j 
the  cliff  had  not  a  foothold  where  the  waves  might  fling  them 
and  leave  them  clinging  till  they  were  seen  and  taken  off;  and 
a  life-boat,  even  if  there  had  been  one  at  Barsands,  could  not 
have  put  out. 

The  time,  however,  for  any  kind  of  suspense  was  shortening 
with  each  pulse  of  the  tide.  Whatever  sin  each  soul  there  was 
conscious  of,  let  it  be  confessed  now  in  whispered  prayer,  hum- 
bly but  in  trust.  The  Great  Secret  stood  very  near  to  each,  and 
in  a  few  moments  all  would  be  over  and  all  learnt. 

Again  and  again  the  Mermaid  was  lifted  by  the  waves  and 
flung  like  a  toy  against  the  cliff.  It  was  pathetic  to  see  the  way 
in  which  she  bent  to  her  fate,  unresisting,  trembling,  tossed  by 
each  incoming  wave  against  the  cruel  granite,  and  beaten  by 
wind  and  water  savagely.  Her  seams  were  opening ;  her  outer 
planks  were  torn  away  and  ground  to  splinters  as  she  struck. 
The  work  had  been  good  to  have  held  out  so  long.  In  the 
midst  of  his  solemn  thoughts  the  Captain  caught  himself  mea- 
suring the  quality  of  his  boat  as  tenderly  as  he  had  reckoned 
up  Patricia's  virtues  ;  but  even  the  best  work  that  ever  man 
laid  could  not  have  saved  them  now.  It  was  the  question  only 
of  a  few  moments.  She  could  not  possibly  hold  out  for  more 
than  five  at  the  longest  against  the  strain  that  was  put  upon 
her. 

Five  minutes — and  then  of  those  three  brave  loving  hearts, 
the  old  and  young,  not  one  would  be  left  to  mourn  the  other  ! 
So  far  this  would  be  merciful.  The  old  life  full  of  honour  and 


34  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOtT  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

the  young  full  of  hope — they  seem  welded  so  closely  one  with 
another,  that  the  one  without  the  other  would  be  a  blank. 
But  ah !  how  much  poorer  the  world  would  be  for  their  loss  ! 

Involuntarily  they  pressed  closer  together ;  not  a  tear,  not  a 
murmur,  among  them  ;  only  a  closer  grasp  of  hands,  a  stronger 
strain  of  arms,  and  a  sweet  and  calm  farewell  looked  lovingly 
from  each  to  each.  The  one  who,  up  to  now,  had  seemed  to 
suffer  most  was  the  Captain,  because  he  was  in  his  own  mind 
the  one  to  blame.  He  ought  to  have  been  more  careful  for  her 
— so  young,  so  good — and  that  brave  fellow  there  !  It  was  a 
mournful  ending  for  two  lives  so  full  of  promise :  and  he  had 
tasted  more  than  the  bitterness  of  death  for  his  own  part  in  his 
self-reproach  and  sorrow  for  them.  So  it  had  been  up  to  now  ; 
but  now,  in  the  very  presence  of  death,  at  the  very  footstool  of 
the  Supreme,  a  strange  calm  had  fallen  on  him  as  on  the  others. 
It  was  a  farewelj,  but  it  was  also  love ;  it  was  peace,  confidence, 
resignation  ;  but  again,  and  above  all,  it  was  love  ! 

Again  the  Mermaid  struck,  again  reeled  back;  and  then,  just 
as  the  last  flutter  of  hope  was  stilled  and  they  had  all  looked 
firmly  in  the  face  of  death,  loving  and  not  afraid,  a  bright  light 
shot  through  the  air,  and  the  whizz  of  a  rocket  passing  over 
their  heads  brought  a  rope  athwart  the  deck.  The  coastguard 
on  the  look-out  had  seen  them,  and  the  imminence  of  their 
peril  had  been  their  salvation.  Close  under  the  cliff  as  they  were 
the  pitch  was  easy,  and  if  there  was  time  all  would  be  saved. 

Gordon  sprang  for  the  rope,  and  Patricia  shrank  back,  push- 
ing forward  her  uncle ;  but  the  old  man  took  her  in  one  arm 
like  a  child  and  thrust  her  to  the  front.  To  debate  the  point 
was  to  lose  all,  and  to  yield  to  his  unselfishness  was  her  own 
best  unselfishness.  So  she  stood  quite  calmly,  and  helped  Gor- 
don to  lash  the  rope  about  her ;  and  in  a  few  seconds  she  was 
safely  corded  and  the  signal  to  haul  away  given.  They  watched 
her  in  the  dim  twilight  as  she  was  drawn  up  by  the  men  on 
the  cliff;  she,  guiding  herself  by  one  hand  away  from  the  sharp 
jags  and  points  of  the  rock  while  holding  on  to  the  rope  by  the 
other,  keeping  her  eyes  turned  downward  to  the  sea  where  the 
men  she  loved  were  still  floating  side  by  side  with  death,  seem- 
ing to  make  her  own  safety  the  assurance  of  theirs  by  the  very 
closeness  of  union  among  them ;  as  if  one  could  not  live  or  die 
alone. 


THE    "  MERMAID. "  36 

Then,  over  wind  and  surf  they  heard  the  men's  glad  cheer 
as  the  girl  was  safely  landed  ;  and  immediately  after  another 
rocket  came  for  the  Captain's  help.  Him  too  Gordon  secured 
and  watched  drawn  up  as  Patricia  had  been  before  him ;  and 
now  only  the  poor  lad  was  left,  sole  captain,  crew,  and  pilot  ol 
the  wreck.  But  now  he  was  comparatively  indifferent,  it  the 
Mermaid  broke  up  before  he  could  be  saved — and  he  knew 
that  though  she  still  kept  the  form  and  semblance  of  a  boat  she 
was  no  better  than  if  she  had  been  made  of  paper,  and  might 
break  up  at  the  next  blow — if  she  went  down  and  he  with  her, 
at  least  the  girl  he  loved  was  safe ;  and  the  dear  old  Captain 
— he  was  saved  too,  to  still  care  for  her  and  protect  her. 

Looking  always  upward,  he  saw  clearly,  dark  as  it  was,  the 
face  of  Patricia  bending  down  from  the  heights,  as  if  encourag- 
ing him  by  her  love.  He  saw  the  long,  dank,  dripping  hair 
falling  like  a  veil  as  she  bent ;  he  saw  her  eyes  looking  frankly, 
yearning  and  loving  too ;  her  Jijjs  parted  with  the  same  tender 
smile,  the  same  kind  of  dumb  speech  that  he  had  seen  before 
to-day,  and  that  seemed  to  say  so  much  in  its  silence.  Doubt- 
less it  was  all  fancy,  and  what  he  saw  was  a  mere  dream  ;  but 
at  the  time  it  was  real,  and  lie  took  heart  as  he  looked — heart 
for  her  sake. 

Then  came  another  muffled  cheer  from  the  cliff,  and  again, 
for  the  third  time,  the  rope  fell ;  and  Gordon  Frere  caught  it 
and  was  saved.  But  just  as  his  foot  left  the  deck  at  the 
first  haul  from  above,  the  Mermaid's  mast  fell  by  the  board,  and 
in  a  second  the  boat  had  disappeared  as  if  by  magic,  and  only 
a  mass  of  splintered  wood  eddying  in  the  boiling  surf  told 
where  she  had  been.  It  was  like  taking  a  life  by  violence,  and 
they  all  felt  when  she  went  to  pieces  as  if  a  playmate  and  a 
friend  had  died. 

The  peril  was  past ;  but  could  Gordon  ever  forget  the  cry  of 
joy  with  which  Patricia  wound  both  her  arms  about  one  of  his, 
as  she  clung  to  him  for  a  moment  with  girlish  abandonment? 
— could  he  ever  forget  the  look  in  the  dear  eyes  that  met  his, 
a  look  so  full  of  the  very  ecstasy  of  joy  that  they  seemed  to 
shine  like  stars  in  the  darkness  ?  And  what  was  there  in  her 
voice  when  she  said  :  "  Dearest  Gordon — oh  !  my  brave,  dear 
boy !"  that  went  to  his  heart  as  if  she  had  said  much  more  than 
the  words  1 


96  "  WHAT  WOlTLD  VOr  T>0,  I.OVE?" 

It  was  not  five  minutes  since  he  had  sat  by  her  in  the  boat, 
hand-in-hand,  looking  at  death  together,  yet  it  seemed  now  as 
if  it  was  a  lifetime  since.  But  that  he  was  a  man,  and  the  two 
coastguards  were  standing  there,  and  the  Captain  was  on  the 
other  side  of  him  wringing  his  hand,  Patricia  would  have  lenrnt 
more  of  his  heart,  and  her  own,  than  she  had  yet  fully  fathomed. 
All  he  could  do,  even  for  his  own  sake,  to  give  back  her  caress, 
was  to  press  her  clasped  hands  against  him  warmly,  and  say  in 
a  voice  that  would  tremble  in  spite  of  himself,  "  Brave  and  dear, 
yourself,  Patricia !  You  helped  to  save  us  all." 

"  The  one  Mermaid  has  gone,  the  other  is  left,"  said  Captain 
Kemball,  looking  at  his  niece.  Taking  off  his  cap,  he  stood 
bareheaded  in  the  storm  :  "  I  thank  thee,  0  Lord,  tor  her  life! " 
he  said  reverently.  And  Gordon,  taking  off  his  cap  too,  said 
"Amen." 

Suddenly  he  blanched  and  staggered. 

"Dear  Uncle!  Gordon,  what  is  it!"  cried  Patricia,  as  she 
caught  him  in  her  strong  yotfhg  arms  just  in  time  to  prevent 
his  falling. 

The  old  man  had  fainted  :  a  thing  he  had  never  done  in  his 
life  before. 

The  coastguardsmen' and  Gordon  took  him  up  among  them, 
carried  him  into  the  little  shelter-hut  by  the  signal ;  where  they 
rubbed  him  and  gave  him  brandy,  and  by  care  and  tender 
treatment,  if  rough  method,  succeeded  in  bringing  him  round. 
But  it  was  a  long  while  first ;  and  at  one  time  it  seemed  almost 
hopeless.  However,  he  came  to  himself  at  last,  and  sat  up  and 
looked  about  him  as  usual.  They  wanted  him  to  have  a  car  or 
cart,  anything  on  wheels,  sent  up  for  him  as  far  as  it  could  tra- 
vel. Gordon  would  have  run  down  for  it ;  but  the  Captain, 
who  had  a  will  of  his  own  insisted  on  walking  home.  He  was 
never  better  in  his  life,  he  said  ;  and  he  rubbed  up  his  curling 
white  hair,  slapped  his  rotund  chest,  and  chafed  his  chilly  hands 
with  vigour.  He  did  not  know  how  he  came  to  be  such  a  fool, 
fainting  like  a  sick  girl !  It  was  only  because  of  that  gipsy. 
he  supposed,  pointing  to  Patricia.  When  he  thought  it  was 
all  over  with  them  he  was  sorry  for  her,  and  blamed  himself 
for  it.  He  ought  to  have  kept  a  smarter  look-out,  and  not  have 
stayed  so  long.  So  he  imagined  the  faintness  was  just  the  re- 
action when  he  found  his  little  girl  safe.  He  was  up  to  the 


THE    "MERMAED.*  37 

now  ;  no  fear !  and  he  declined  all  further  coddling.  Cod- 
dling was  not  the  thing,  he  went  on,  when  he  carried  her  Majes- 
ty's commission,  eh,  Gordon  ]  and  he'd  show  them  yet  that  he 
was  man  enough  for  any  two  of  them  ! 

So,  with  a  kind  of  innocent  rollick  that  yet  was  not  like  him- 
self, and  with  a  certain  dazed  look  about  him  he  bade  the  men 
good  night ;  emptying  his  purse  among  them  sailor  fashion ; 
and  set  off  down  the  steep  cliff  path  gaily  enough. 

It  was  a  weary  tramp.  The  night  was  pitch  dark  by  now; 
the  storm  was  raging  furiously  ;  they  were  all  drenched  through 
and  through — to  their  bones,  said  the  Captain;  and  the  cliff 
path  was  difficult  for  the  mutilated  pedestrian  at  the  best  of 
times.  To-night  it  was  doubly  so,  being  slippery  as  well  as 
rugged,  and  difficult  to  find  in  the  blackness  overhead.  They 
got  down  in  sufficient  safety  on  the  whole;  though  the  Captain 
had  one  or  two  bad  falls  by  the  way  which  shook  him  terribly  ; 
and,  weakened  as  he  was  already  by  excitement,  fatigue,  and 
that  strange  fainting  fit  up  above,  he  was  fearfully  strained  by 
the  time  they  reached  home. 

"Ah,  my  dear,  I  am  getting  an  old  man  1 "  he  said  to  Pa- 
tricia with  a  half-humorous  melancholy,  as  he  flung  himself  ex- 
hausted on  the  sofa.  "  I  must  leave  off  these  pranks  for  the 
future.  For  the  future,  indeed!  I  have  lost  my  boat,  and 
needs  must,  I'm  thinking." 

"  Oh,  we  will  save  up  our  money  and  get  another  Mermaid  I " 
said  Patricia  cheerfully.  "  We  should  be  lost  without  our  boat ! 
We  must  have  another  just  like  her — the  poor  old  Mermaid  1 " 

"  We'll  have  to  content  ourselves  with  you,  my  dear,  as  the 
sole  representative  of  the  tribe,"  said  the  old  man.  "  Hey, 
Gordon  ? " 

"  We  might  do  worse,"  said  Gordon  with  a  sudden  flush,  as 
he  looked  at  the  girl  tenderly — as  a  man  looks  when  he  loves. 

The  old  man  caught  both  the  flush  and  the  look. 

"  Give  me  your  arm,  boy,"  he  then  said  with  a  strange  soft- 
ness of  manner.  "  I  feel  a  little  the  worse  for  wear  to-night ; 
do  you  help  me  upstairs.  You  won't  be  jealous,  Pat  1 " 

"Of  Gordon?  No  indeed,  whatever  he  were  to  do  for  you, 
dear  ! "  she  answered  frankly.  "  Jealous  of  Gordon  ! "  she 
laughed. 

"  That's  right,  my  girl.    Of  all  the  fiends  that  ruin  happiness, 


38  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

and  dignity  too,  jealousy  is  one  of  the  worst.  Never  give  it 
harboiwage  in  your  heart,  lass.  Keep  out  jealousy  and  keep 
in  truth;  and  remember  that  a  friend  is  a  friend,  and  that  your 
word  once  passed,  you  must  go  to  the  stake  before  you  break 
it !  Now  give  me  a  kiss,  and  good  night." 

Patricia,  laid  her  hand  in  his.  "  Dear  Uncle  ! "  she  said 
fondly,  bending  her  face  to  his. 

He  took  her  hand;  then  laid  it  side  by  side  with  Gordon's 
as  if  measuring  both  together. 

"It's  a  pleasant  putte  enough  !  he  said  to  the  young  man, 
smiling.  "  Not  a  fine  lady's  useless  little  fist,  but  a  good,  ser- 
viceable, womanly  hand  that  can  handle  a  rope  and  dandle  a 
baby,  both  as  they  should  be  done.  I'm  thinking  it  will  be  a 
treasure  some  day  to  some  one." 

"  Uncle  ! "  she  remonstrated,  with  a  burning  face ;  while  Gor- 
don gave  her  hand  one  strong  silent  pressure,  answering,  and 
not  looking  at  her: 

"It  will  so,  sir.  And  I  hope  he  will  get  it  who  will  prize  it 
most." 

"  Good  night,  lassie,"  said  the  Captain  with  a  smile  half 
pleased,  half  pathetic.  "  It's  all  right.  When  I'm  gone  you'll 
have  him  to  take  care  of  you.  Sleep  well  and  don't  dream ; 
or  if  you  do,  dream  of  those  who  love  you." 

"  Good  night,  my  dear — my  dearest  dear  ! "  she  exclaimed, 
and  threw  her  arms  round  his  neck  and  kissed  him  fervently ; 
he  pressing  her  to  his  heart  with  a  kind  of  passionate  solemnity 
of  which  Patricia  had  never  seen  the  like  in  him  before. 
"  Good  night,  Gordon,"  she  then  said,  her  eyes  downcast,  her 
cheeks  dyed  crimson,  and  tears,  she  did  not  know  why,  begin- 
ning to  start. 

"  There,  boy,  give  her  a  kiss  ;  you  have  earned  it  to-nigh t," 
said  the  Captain,  standing  as  it  were  between  them,  holding  a 
hand  of  each.  "  Kiss  your  friend,  Pat,  who  has  been  so  near 
to  death  with  you  and  who  helped  to  save  you." 

Trembling  as  much  as  herself,  Gordon  drew  her  gently  to- 
wards him.  The  tears  had  come  fully  into  her  eyes  by  now,  and 
were  falling  slowly  and  heavily  down  her  cheeks — tears  that 
were  alternated  with  a  smile  and  a  blush,  and  a  wish  that  her 
dear  uncle  had  not  said  what  he  had ;  and  yet,  what  harm  was 
there  in  kissing  her  old  friend  ? 


THE    "MERMAID."  39 

Feeling  that  to  obey  his  wish  frankly  was  better  modesty 
than  to  object,  she  lifted  up  her  face  all  wet  as  it  was,  and 
Gordon,  with  almost  as  much  bashfulness  as  her  own,  tremb- 
ling, proud,  happy,  and  yet  shy,  stooped  his  head  and  kissed 
her  full  on  the  lips,  with  a  reverent  tenderness  if  also  a  frank 
affection  not  lost  on  the  Captain. 

"  Thank  you  for  all  you  have  done,"  said  Patricia  simply  ; 
and  lighting  her  candle  went  off  to  bed  with  a  trouble  at  her 
heart  she  had  never  felt  before. 

She  heard  her  uncle,  helped  by  Gordon,  stumble  heavily  up- 
stairs. He  walked  as  a  drunken  man  might,  and  somehow  the 
failing  footsteps  struck  a  chill  to  her  heart  that  seemed  like  the 
beginning  of  disaster.  Then  she  heard  the  young  man's  voice 
and  his  in  lower  earnest  talk  ;  and  then  a  "  Good  night "  said 
cheerily,  as  Gordon  closed  the  tloor  and  strode  downstairs. 
And  after  this  she  heard  no  more. 

Thronging  thoughts  perplexed  and  possessed  her,  so  that  she 
could  not  sleep,  weary  as  she  was.  It  seemed  to  her  as  if  all 
things  had  suddenly  gone  astray,  and  life  was  different  alto- 
gether to-night  from  what  it  had  been  this  morning.  In  the 
morning  how  bright  everything  had  been  ;  in  the  evening  how 
dark  and  full  of  dread  !  The  Mermaid  lost ;  her  uncle  unlike 
himself ;  Gordon  going  away  for  at  least  two,  and  may  be  five, 
years — and.  he  too  not  the  same  old  friend  and  chum  that  he 
had  been  all  these  past  years — but  this  was  not  a  change  that 
gave  her  the  same  pain  the  others  gave  her ;  in  the  distance 
Aunt  Hatnley  and  the  lad}'  companion  who  would  introduce  a 
new  order  of  things,  and  perhaps  an  order  they  would  not  like. 
— these  thoughts  kept  her  awake  far  into  the  night.  Her  head 
would  keep  on  talking  to  her,  as  was  her  phrase  ;  but  at  last 
she  dropped  asleep  with  the  heavy  slumber  of  the  young,  and 
did  not  awake  till  quite  late  into  the  morning. 


40  "•  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 


CHAPTER  V. 

MORS  JANUA. 

HOCKED  to  find  how  late  it  was  when  she  awoke  Patricia 
lu^rrit-d  over  her  dressing,  afraid  of  having  kept  her  uncle 
waiting  for  breakfast;  which  was  one  of  the  domestic  offen- 
ces he  found  it  hard  to  forgive.  The  temper  of  the  commander 
still  clung  to  him,  and  with  the  kindest  heart  in  the  world  he 
had  one  of  the  tightest  hands  when  he  exercised  any  discipline 
at  all.  He  was  always  captain  in  his  own  ship,  he  used  to  say, 
and  always  intended  to  be  ;  and  if  his  laws  were  few  they  were 
positive. 

Patricia  however  was  needlessly  alarmed.  When  she  got 
downstairs,  full  an  hour  after  her  usual  time,  she  found  that 
her  uncle  had  not  yet  risen.  She  was  glad  of  this  as  ft  enabled 
her  to  help  Sarah  with  the  breakfast ;  and  with  a  womanly 
instinct  of  the  right  sort  she  took  pains  to  make  it  a  breakfast 
of  special  niceness,  in  reference  to  her  uncle's  fatigue  and  sei- 
zure of  the  night  before.  But  though  it  took  rather  a  long 
time  to  get  ready,  still  the  Captain,  usually  so  punctual  and 
so  early,  was  not  astir. 

She  went  up  to  his  room  and  knocked  at  the  door.  There 
was  no  answer.  She  knocked  again  ;  still  no  answer.  Again 
and  again  ;  each  time  louder  than  before  as  the  imperiousness 
of  fear  made  itself  'felt.  And  then,  holding  her  breath  for  she 
knew  not  what  unspoken  dread,  she  opened  the  door  and  went  in. 

On  the  bed  lay  the  old  man  still  in  the  wet  clothes  of  the 
evening  before.  He  had  evidently  flung  himself  there,  weary 
and  exhausted,  when  Gordon  left  him  ;  and  so  had  fallen  asleep. 
Asleep  ?  Was  that  white  face  sleeping  ?  When  she  took  his 
hand,  and  it  hung  so  coldly  strange  and  still  in  hers — when  she 
kissed  his  face  and  found  that  so  cold  too,  so  rigid  underneath 
the  skin,  the  glassy  eyes  not  quite  closed,  the  muuth  opened, 
the  jaw  diopped — was  that  sleep  ?  Was  it  not  rather  the  thing 
she  had  seen  only  a  day  ago  ?  It  was  Death  ;  and  she  knew  it. 


MORS  JANUA.  41 

Soon  the  servant  came  hurrying  up  to  her  loud  call ;  and 
then  the  doctor  from  St.  John's,  who  happened  to  be  passing 
through  the  village  at  the  moment,  was  brought  in  ;  and  in  less 
than  ten  minutes  the  house  downstairs  was  thronged  with  eager 
questioners  crowding  up  to  hear  the  news,  which  had  spread  as 
if  the  birds  of  the  air  had  carried  it,  confirmed  at  the  fountain 
head.  It  was  like  a  social  earthquake  in  the  village  ;  and  even 
brave  men  felt  scared  when  they  saw  the  cottage  flag  floating 
half-mast  high — the  coastguardsman  who  came  in  had  done 
that ;  it  would  have  been  shameful  and  indelicate  else,  as  bad 
as  a  piano  playing,  or  the  first  Sunday  at  church  in  bright 
colours — and  heard  that  the  fine  old  captain  who  was  like  a 
father  in  the  place,  had  been  found  dead  in  his  bed — God  save 
his  soul  alive  ! — and  that  a  life  which  looked  as  if  it  had  had 
many  years  yet  to  run  was  cut  short  just  when  it  was  most 
wanted.  For  the  fate  of  the  poor  fatherless  and  motherless 
girl,  whom  they  had  seen  grow  up  among  them  like  one  of 
their  own,  touched  them  all  with  pity ;  and  many  a  man's  eyes 
were  moist  that  day,  and  many  a  woman  felt  her  mother's  heart 
ache  with  pain,  for  the  bright  and  friendly  "maid"  who  had 
always  been  the  first  to  lend  a  helping  hand  when  a  neighbour 
was  down  ;  but  who  now  wanted  a  stronger  hand  to  help  her 
than  any  to  be  found  in  Barsands. 

Whether  she  was  pitied  or  deserted  Patricia  neither  knew 
nor  for  the  moment  cared.  She  would  not  leave  the  room  where 
her  dead  uncle  lay,  and  she  would  not  let  go  his  hand.  She 
did  not  speak  nor  cry  nor  stir,  but  stood  quite  still  with  a  dazed 
kind  of  air,  looking  at  him.  Only  once,  when  the  doctor 
handled  him  as  she  thought  roughly,  she  put  her  arms  over  him 
in  the  manner  of  protection,  saying,  "  Don't  do  that — you  will 
hurt  him." 

She  could  not  realize  the  fact  that  this  body,  this  person  of 
the  one  she  had  loved  so  tenderly  and  lived  with  so  long  was 
no  more  now  than  the  stones  in  the  fields  or  the  wood  in  the 
forest.  SI  e  was  intellectually  conscious  that  he  was  dead,  but 
she  had  still  the  feeling  that  he  felt  and  saw  and  understood 
though  he  was  not  able  to  speak  to  her,  and  that  she  must  take 
care  of  him  against  those  who  did  not  love  him  as  she  loved 
him.  But  indeed  she  had  not  much  conscious  thought  o£  any. 
kind.  She  had  only  a  general  sense  of  darkness  and  a  \Jull 


42  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

kind  of  pain,  mixed  up  with  a  mocking  and  incongruous  acti- 
vity of  eyesight  that  seemed  half  sacrilegious,  as  when  she  found 
herself  counting  the  worn  buttons  of  his  waistcoat  and  the 
stripes  on  his  grey  flannel  shirt. 

The  doctor  spoke  to  her,  and  tried  to  reason  with  her  ;  but 
though  she  heard  his  voice  clearly  enough,  she  did  not  under- 
stand what  he  said.  She  wondered  why  he  talked  to  her,  and 
she  wished  he  would  leave  off;  but  outwardly  she  was  patient, 
and  at  one  time  he  thought  he  was  doing  her  good.  Knowing 
his  profession,  he  did  not  like  that  tearless,  half-bewildered  and 
half-stony  look  she  had.  If  she  had  shrieked  and  sobbed,  and 
been  even  petulant  and  unreasonable,  he  would  have  under- 
stood it  better ;  but  this  silent  tenacity  had  an  ugly  look  of 
pressure,  and  he  wanted  to  rouse  her  out  of  it. 

Presently,  in  the  midst  of  his  talk,  Gordon  Frere,  pale  and 
breathless,  came  rustling  through  the  garden  and  up  into  the 
room  where  Patricia  was  standing,  still  keeping  guard  over  th* 
dead. 

The  news  had  met  him  as  he  came  in  from  St.  John's,  and 
half  a  dozen  people  had  stopped  him  in  the  village  to  repeat  it. 

"  Patricia  !  "  he  said,  touching  her  lightly  on  the  shoulder. 

His  voice  seemed  to  break  the  spell.  She  turned  hastily  and 
held  out  her  hand. 

"  Oh,  Gordon,  how  glad  I  am  you  have  come !  you  are  all 
I  have  left,"  she  said.  Look  there,  Gordon  !  Gordon  !  he  is 
dead  ? " 

Then  she  turned  away  her  head,  and  covering  her  face  with 
her  hands  broke  down  into  passionate  sobs  and  tears, 

And  the  doctor,  looking  at  her  critically,  gave  a  little  sigh  of 
relief  and  said  to  himself,  "  Now  she'll  do." 

"  My  darling  !  what  can  I  do  for  you  1 "  said  Gordon,  taking 
her  into  his  arms  with  a  strange  mixture  of  tenderness,  protec- 
tion, and  shyness.  "  Patricia,  don't  give  way  like  this,  dear ; 
you  break  my  heart  to  see  you  !  " 

"  He  was  so  fond  of  you,  Gordon  ! "  said  poor  Patricia,  look- 
ing up  into  his  face.  "  How  he  loved  you  ! " 

"  And  how  I  loved  him  ?"  answered  the  young  man,  brush- 
ing his  hand  over  his  eyes.  "  We  are  one  in  our  sorrow,  dear  1 
He  was  almost  as  much  to  me  as  he  was  to  you  !  " 

"  Ah,  yes,  you  knew  him,  and  he  loved  you,"    she  repeated. 


MORS  JAMTA.  43 

*  And  I  love  you  too,"  he  said  in  a  deep  voice. 

"  Yes,  I  know  you  do,"  she  answered  simply,  "  You  are 
the  only  person  in  the  world  who  does  now — all  I  have  left." 

"  And  I  will  be  always  yours — always  part  of  your  very 
self,  if  you  will  have  me,  darling  ?  We  will  never  desert  each 
other — never — never !  " 

"  Never  !  "  she  said,  tears  breaking  her  voice  ;  the  poor 
young  people  transacting  their  love  affairs  so  innocently  before 
the  doctor  and  in  the  presence  of  the  dead  1  "But  oh  !  do  not 
(et  us  think  of  ourselves  ;  let  us  think  o^f  him,"  she  added  with 
sudden  remorse,  turning  towards  the  bed,  where,  flinging  her- 
self on  her  knees,  she  took  the  cold  hand  again  in  hers  and 
kissed  it  fervently  as  if  asking  pardon  for  her  momentary  dis- 
loyalty. 

And  Gordon  was  not  ashamed  to  feel  his  own  eyes  dim  and 
his  eyelashes  wet  for  sympathy  and  sorrow  too.  But  he  soon 
lifted  her  up  again,  and  made  her  sit  down  while  he  stood  by 
her,  holding  one  of  her  hands  in  both  of  his  ;  her  other  laid 
lightly  on  the  clear  dead.  No  more  was  said  between  them. 
Quite  quiet  and  silent  they  remained  there,  she  gazing  at  the 
white  face  with  its  falling  wreath  of  snowy  hair  before  her, 
thinking  only  of  him ;  he  looking  at  the  white  face  too,  but 
thinking  most  of  her  and  her  desolate  future.  And  in  this 
silent  companionship  of  sorrow  they  felt  drawn  closer  together 
somehow  than  if  they  had  spoken  for  hours.  They  were  un- 
conscious of  time,  or  who  came  and  went  about  them.  They, 
were  together  in  the  presence  of  the  man  they  had  both  loved, 
and  whose  spirit  seemed  with  them  stilL 

So  they  would  have  stayed  probably  till  night ;  but  the  wo- 
men who  had  been  sent  for — those  mysterious  death-bed 
women — came  to  fulfil  the  last  offices,  and  the  doctor  gave  Gor- 
don a  sign  to  take  Patricia  away.  He  thought  there  would  be 
a  difficulty  and  he  had  prepared  his  exhortations  :  but  there 
was  none  of  that  feminine  exaggeration  of  character  in  her 
which  makes  sorrowing  women  so  often  unmanageable. 
Besides,  she  felt  that  Gordon  was  her  master  now ;  that  it  was 
.her  duty  to  obey  him  as  she  had  formerly  obeyed  her  uncle. 
When  he  said  she  was  to  go,  she  looked  at  him  piteously, 
mutely  beseeching  him  for  leave  to  stay  ;  but  when  he  repeated 
his  words,  drawing  her  as  if  to  lift  her  from  the  chair,  she  got 


44  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

np  at  once,  and  though  she  wept  afresh  she  went  with  the 
simple  obedience  of  a  child. 

Gordon  kept  with  the  poor  desolate  young  thing  the  whole 
day  through.  But  the  long  hours  came  to  an  end  at  last,  and 
he  too  must  leave  her.  It  was  his  last  leave-taking.  He  must 
he  off  early  in  the  morning  for  Portsmouth,  and  neither  pity 
nor  sorrow,  nor  yet  love,  could  make  the  time  longer.  They 
had  talked  but  little  through  the  day,  but  they  had  kept  very 
near  together.  They  seemed  afraid  of  losing  sight  of  each 
other  ;  as  if  something  would  happen  to  separate  thtm  for  ever 
if  they  drifted  apart  for  a  moment.  There  had  been  no  pre- 
tence of  reading,  or  of  doing  anything  whatever  with  a  purpose. 
They  had  either  sat  in  the  little  sitting-room,  side  by  side  on 
the  black  horse-hair  sofa,  or  they  had  wandered  out  into  the 
garden,  scarcely  noticing  how  gloomy  the  day  was — and  how 
bright  yesterday  I — but  looking  at  each  familiar  tree  and  flower 
as  people  do  who  look  for  the  last  time.  And  they  had  stood 
by  the  model  of  the  old  Holdfast,  and  had  touched  it  with  a 
lingering  fondness  as  if  it  had  been  a  creature  that  could  feel. 
But  as  they  walked  round  it,  both  Gordon  who  had  sense,  and 
Patricia  who  was  not  fantastic,  turned  pale  and  looked  at  each 
other  with  a  sense  of  awe  upon  them,  when  they  saw  that,  by 
some  means  not  evident,  the  storm  last  night  had  broken  off 
the  figure-head  of  the  resolute-looking  being  that  had  sym- 
bolised the  name,  and  that  the  legend  underneath,  painted  by 
his  own  hand,  "  Robert  Kemball,  R.N.,  Commander,"  had  been 
torn  away  with  the  device.  They  made  no  remark  to  each 
other  w  heu.  they  saw  this.  They  only  looked  up,  and  both  were 
very  pale.  It  foreshadowed  nothing,  explained  nothing;  but 
it  gave  them  a  feeling  of  superstitious  dread  that  made  the 
present  burden  heavier. 

The  hours  passed,  as  all  hours  do,  and  the  last  moment  had 
come.  Many  a  time  during  the  day  Miss  Pritchard  and  old 
mother  Jose  had  come  down,  wanting  to  be  of  use ;  and  now 
the  former,  thinking  that  Patricia  would  be  none  the  worse  for 
at  least  the  appearance  of  womanly  countenance,  was  knitting 
a  brown  woollen  antimacassar  by  the  dim  light  of  one  kitchen 
candle,  lamenting  in  her  heart  the  selfishness  of  the  young  in 
Patricia's  absorption  in  her  grief  for  the  one  and  her  love  for 
the  other,  and  thinking  it  was  a  good  thing,  as  matters  had 


MOBS  JANUA.  46 

turned,  that  her  sister  Matilda  had  never  married  that  old  man. 
And  yet,  if  she  had,  she  would  have  had  her  pension,  and  Pa- 
tricia would  have  gone  to  her  own  relations.  Yet  Miss  Prit- 
chard  was  by  no  means  a  bad  hearted  woman.  She  was  ouly 
human ;  and  she  lived  in  a  small  place,  with  a  very  narrow 
field  in  which  to  work  out  her  life. 

"  Well !  time's  up  ;  I  must  go,  Patricia."  said  Gordon. 

He  was  pale  and  desperately  agitated.  Up  to  this  moment 
he  had  been  the  calmer,  and  more  self-controlled  of  the  two  ; 
now  their  positions  were  reversed,  and  it  was  he  who  had  to 
be  comforted. 

"  What  o'clock  is  it  t "  asked  Patricia,  waking  up  as  if  from 
a  tlream. 

"  Ten,"  said  Miss  Pritchard  demurely. 

"  Yes,  it's  time  for  you  to  go,"  she  answered.  "  Uncle  likes 
the  house  shut  up  at  ten." 

"  You'll  write  to  me  ?"  he  said,  standing  and  holding  her 
hands  in  his.  "  You  know  you  will  probably  have  to  move 
from  here ;  you  cannot  stay  here  alone  ;  so  I  shall  not  know 
where  you  are  unless  you  tell  me." 

"  You  need  not  be  afraid  of  her  being  left,  Mr.  Frere.  I 
will  look  after  her  till  she  gets  a  better  protectress,"  said  Miss 
Pritchard  in  her  precise  voice. 

She  meant  it  kindly,  but  her  words  came  in  with  a  horrible 
jar  on  the  young  lovers.  They  had  forgotten  she  was  there, 
forgotten  all  but  each  other  :  and  now  her  voice  broke  in  be- 
tween them  like  a  sign  of  the  world  and  the  future,  and  the 
conventionalities  too,  which  were  about  to  divide  them. 

"  Yes,  of  course  I  will  write,"  said  Patricia,  "  And  I  shall 
want  to  hear  from  you  too,  Gordon-  I  shall  have  only  your 
letters  to  make  me  happy.  Happy !  I  shall  never  be  happy 
again  !  "  she  cried.  And  she  believed  what  she  said. 

The  ancient  schoolmistress  shook  her  head  softly ;  and 
though  the  tears  were  in  her  eyes,  tears  of  honest  human  sym- 
pathy falling  over  her  unlovely  work,  she  knew  by  experience 
that  time  is  not  eternity  and  that  the  "  never"  of  the  young  is 
of  very  short  duration. 

"  Come  upstairs  with  me,"  then  said  Gordon.  "  I  would 
like  to  say  my  last  good-bye  to  him." 

"  God   bless  you,  dear  ! "  cried  Patricia,  flinging  back  her 


46  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

head  with  a  gesture  peculiar  to  herself,  and  which  meant  an  out- 
pour of  love  and  thanks  greater  than  she  could  put  into  words. 

Her  lips  quivering  and  his  set  firm,  hand  in  hand  they  went 
up  the  stairs  and  into  the  shabby  little  room  that  was  now  a 
sacred  temple  to  them.' 

"  Make  a  prayer  with  me,  Patricia,"  Gordon  said.  "  It  willa 
be  good  to  remember." 

"  Yes,"  she  answered  ;  and  she  looked  at  the  dead  man — so 
she  would  have  looked  had  he  been  alive — for  his  approval. 

Kneeling  down  by  the  side  of  the  bed  they  said  the  Lord's 
Prayer  together,  like  two  children  at  their  good-night ;  nothing 
more  ;  tut  both  felt  it  their  sacrament.  Then  they  stood  up 
still  holding  by  each  other. 

"  And  you  will  not  forget  me  ?"  said  Gordon  in  a  husky  voice. 

"  Forget  you  !     How  can  I  forget  you  1 "  she  answered. 

"  Nor  love  any  one  else,  nor  let  any  one  else  love  you  1 " 

M  What  do  you  mean,  dear  ?  How  should  I  love,  or  whom  V 

"  You  feel  then  you  are  engaged  to  me,  Patricia  ?  that  you 
have  promised  to  be  my  wife  through  good  report  and  evil  re- 
port, through  poverty  and  all  loss  1 " 

"  Was  that  what  you  meant  last  night  1 "  said  Patricia 
simply,  "  I  did  not  understand  you  quite.  If  it  is  I  am  glad. 
Yes,  I  will  be  your  wife,  Gordon,  and  I  will  not  love  any  one 
else,  nor  let  any  one  love  me." 

"  God  bless  you  !  Oh,  how  can  I  thank  you  enough  for  these 
dear  words  !  He  would  have  been  glad,  darling.  He  said  so 
to  me  last  night,  and  I  was  to  have  come  to-day  to  get  your 
promise.  He  wanted  to  know  that  you  loved  me,  from  your 
own  mouth,  before  I  went  away.  You  do  not  mind  having  to 
say  now  at  such  a  sad  time,  do  you,  dear  1  You  do  not  think  I 
am  selfish  in  putting  it  to  you  now — and  here?  I  could  scarcely 
go  away  and  leave  it  in  doubt." 

"  It  would  have  been  cruel  if  you  had,"  she  answered. 

"  You  like  to  feel  bound  to  me,  pledged  to  be  my  wife,  to 
care  for  no  one  else,  only  me,  all  through  your  life  1 " 

She  looked  him  full  in  the  eyes  :  "  Like  it,  dear  !  it  is  the 
only  comfort  I  have,"  she  said. 

At  another  time  she  would  have  been  shy  and  bashful,  she 
would  have  laughed  and  cried  and  blushed  ;  but  the  whole 
thing  was  too  solemn  now  for  any  of  the  pretty  follies  or  trepi- 


MORS  JANtJA.  47 

dations  of  love.  It  was  an  oath  they  were  pledging,  not  a  man 
wooing  and  a  woman  being  won. 

"  And  you  \vill  always  feel  that  I  anvyours  ?  as  much  as  if  we 
were  married  already  ?  "  continued  Gordon.  "  If  there  is  any 
thing  in  which  I  or  my  affairs — my  money,  Patricia — can  be  of 
use  to  you,  do  not  hesitate  to  go  to  Mr.  Fletcher,  and  tell  him 
who  you  are,  and  that  I  sent  you.  It  breaks  my  heart  to  think 
how  utterly  alone  and  unfriended  I  am  leaving  you.  If  it  were 
nut  for  the  dishonour  I  would  stay  and  look  after  you." 

"  I  shall  have  your  love  and  his,"  said  Patricia,  struggling 
against  her  tears  and  conquering  them  ;  "and  I  will  not  let  any- 
thing make  me  cowardly  or  complaining.  I  will  bear  my  fate 
cheerfully,  whatever  it  may  be,  for  his  sake  and  yours.  I  will 
be  worthy  of  you  both,  Gordon." 

"  I  trust  you,  Patricia  darling,  beloved  1  I  trust  you  for  all 
strength  and  honour  as  I  trust  the  sun  for  shining,"  said  Gor- 
don fervently.  "  Never  let  us  lose  trust  in  each  other — I  in 
yqu,  and  you  in  me.  Darling,  promise  me  that." 

"  Never,  Gordon  !  I  could  not  live  if  I  did  not  trust  you. 
Will  you  always  believe  in  me1?"  she  said,  with  a  yearning 
kind  of  look. 

"  Will  I  always  believe  in  the  sun?  Could  I  doubt  you,  Patricia? 
If  you  came  to  me  in  rags,  loaded  with  the  world's  scorn,  I 
would  believe  you  before  the  world  I  Now,  good-bye,  and  God 
bless  you,  my  heart's  dear  love  !  " 

"  Good-bye,  Gordon  ;  and  God  bless  you  too  !  "  said  Patricia. 

"  You  will  give  me  one  kiss  again  to-night  ?  You  may,  now  you 
are  my  promised  wife.  I  would  not  ask  you  if  you  ought  not." 

"  I  have  given  you  my  love  and  my  word,  and  that  may  well 
follow,"  she  said,  and  put  her  arms  round  him  frankly. 

He  held  her  pressed  close  to  his  heart  with  one  arm,  passing 
his  other  hand  lovingly  over  her  hair,  holding  back  her  face 
while  he  looked  long  and  tenderly  into  it. 

"  My  beloved  !  "  he  said,,  and  kissed  her. 

With  a  great  sob  he  loosened  her  arms  and  his  own,  and  she 
heai'd  him  dash  down  the  stairs,  and  through  the  gate  and  so  on 
to  the  stony  village  road.  She  heard  no  more ;  and  Miss  Prit- 
chard  running  up  at  the  sound  of  her  fall,  found  her  lying  pale 
and  senseless  on  the  floor.  Her  strong  spirit  had  given  way, 
and  the  brave  heart  yielded  to  its  pain  at  last. 


48  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER  VL 
viral. 


EXT  day's  post  brought  a  letter  from  Aunt  Hamley  to 
her  brother.  It  was  not  a  very  long  letter,  but  it  said 
a  good  deal  in  its  space.  It  was  written  in  a  fine 
pointed  hand,  with  long,  sweeping  tails  and  graceful  curves 
that  ran  far  into  the  next  line,  giving  the  page  a  tangled  and 
cobwebbed  look,  more  ladylike  than  legible. 

It  set  forth  in  the  beginning,  as  if  it  had  been  a  legal  de- 
claration, the  writer's  womanly  satisfaction  that  he,  Kobert 
Kemball,  had  at  last  seen  the  fatal  mistake  he  had  made,  before 
it  was  too  late,  if  indeed  it  was  not  already  too  late  to  remedy 
it  No  one  but  himself,  it  said,  with  one  of  what  the  Captain 
used  to  call  Rosanna's  characteristic  digs,  would  have  thought 
of  bringing  up  a  young  lady  without  some  older  lady  to  guide 
and  instruct  her.  Whatever  harm  came  of  it  however,  her 
brother  Robert  must  never  forget  that  she,  Rosanna  Hamley, 
had  lifted  up  her  voice  against  it  from  the  first  —  though  vainly. 
As  it  was,  she  was  glad  to  see  him  awakening  to  a  sense  of  his 
true  position  ;  and  she  decidedly  recommended  him  to  look  out 
for  a  lady  companion  forthwith  —  or  rather,  she  proposed  to  do 
so  for  him  herself.  There  were  one  or  two  highly-trained 
persons  at  Milltown  of  whose  circumstances  she  knew  something; 
poor,  and  for  whom  a  small  salary  with  a  comfortable  home 
would  suffice  ;  women  perfectly  well-bred  and  fitted  for  the 
work  of  reducing  an  undisciplined  young  person  to  the  ladylike 
demeanour  demanded  by  society.  She  assumed  that  Patricia 
was  undisciplined;  poor  girl,  how  indeed  could  she  be  any- 
thing else  I  Then  she  went  on  to  say,  that  if  her  brother  and 
his  "niece  —  she  said  "  your  niece,"  not  "  my  "  nor  "  our  "  — 
would  like  to  come  over  to  Abbey  Holme  for  a  week  or  so  she 
would  be  better  able  to  give  advice  ;  and  she  would  be  glad  to 
welcome  them  there.  She  could  not  deny,  nor  would  she,  that 
there  had  been  differences  between  her  brother  Robert  and 


NOV.fi  VITA. 

herself,  and  this  would  be  a  good  way  of  healing  them, 
being  of  use  to  both  himself  and  his  niece.  She  could  say  no 
more.  If  he  would  accept,  her  offer,  he  was  to  write  at  once  and 
say  when  they  were  coming  ,»  if  he  rejected  it,  she  did  not  see 
how  she  could  help  farther  in  the  matter,  as,  on  second  thoughts, 
it  would  be  undesirable  to  engage  a  lady  so  entirely  in  the  dark 
as  she  would  be  were  she  not  made  better  acquainted  with  his 
niece  before  she  looked  out.  The  letter  ended  with  a  post- 
script :  "  Dear  Dora  Drummond,"  it  said,  "  Mr.  Handey's 
cousin,  and  the  child  of  my  adoption — failing  Patricia,  whom 
you  refused  to  me — is  the  best  proof  I  can  give  of  my  fitness 
for  advising  on  the  subject  of  young  ladies'  education;  also  of 
what  my  training  would  have  done  for  your  niece.  I  think, 
when  you  see  Dora,  you  will  acknowledge  that  the  grace,  good 
breeding,  and  perfect  self-command  1  have  laboured  so  hard  to 
inculcate  have  been  thoroughly  well  learnt.  Her  association 
will  do  Patricia  good  ;  and  her  principles  are,  I  am  happy  to 
say,  too  firmly  fixed  for  me  to  be  afraid  of  undesirable  associa- 
tions on  her  own  account." 

This  was  the  elaborately-worded  letter  that  came  in  answer 
to  the  Captain's  brief  and  bluff  request  for  a  few  words  of  advice: 
"Should  he  get  a  lady  companion  for  Patricia?  She  was 
eighteen  now,  and  he  wished  her  to  have  the  best  of  everything. 
What  did  his  sister  Rosanna  think1?" 

Patricia  read  this  letter  as  it  it  had  reference  to  another  life. 
Her  vague  disquiet  at  the  idea  of  the  lady  companion  seemed 
so  childish  now  in  the  face  of  the  terrible  reality  that  had  come  ; 
and  so  far  off!  It  seemed  as  i.  it  was  months  ago,  and  at  the 
other  side  of  a  wide  river,  since  her  uncle  hail  called  her  into 
the  porch  to  listen  to  the  project  over  which  he  had  been  brood- 
ing, and  which  startled  her  so  much.  It  was  only  three  days, 
since,  but  a  lifetime  lay  between.  Three  days  ago  she  was  a 
happy  child ;  now  she  was  a  sorrowful  woman.  It  was  like 
waking  up  from  a  dream  ;  or  rather,  it  was  like  a  dream  itself 
— as  if  that  happy  past  was  the  reality  still,  and  this  dreadful 
present  a  mere  vision,  a  nightmare,  from  which  she  would  awake 
in  the  morning,  to  hear  her  uncle  knocking  up  the  house  as 
usual — his  kind  old  face,  framed  in  its  silver  hair,  beaming 
with  affection,  and  freshened  with  the  morning  air,  looking  up 
to  the  window  from  the  lawn  as  he  called  out,  "  Hi,  there  lazy- 
D 


60  "  WH  A.T  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

bones!  Past  six  o'clock,  and  you  still  abed  I  Tumble  up, 
tumble  up,  or  I'll  be  at  you  !  " 

But,  ah !  it  was  all  too  real !  He  was  dead ;  Gordon  was 
away ;  there  was  no  return,  no  escape  to  the  beloved  past ;  she 
had  to  realise  the  present,  and  to  live  through  it. 

Fortunately  for  her  she  had  no  one  at  this  moment  on  whom 
she  could  fall  back.  She  was  the  sole  mistress  of  all  that  was 
left,  and  she  must  exert  herself.  Men  may  die,  but  men  must 
live  ;  and  those  who  are  left  must  be  provided  for  on  the  day 
when  the  beloved  lie  dead  all  the  same  as  on  other  days.  The 
morning  breaks  and  the  evening  wanes,  and  there  is  the  up- 
rising and  the  downsitting,  as  if  no  light  had  gone  out,  and  no 
one's  life  was  the  poorer  for  its  loss.  But  a  short  time  can  be 
spared  from  active  work  for  the  filling  in  of  a  grave,  let  who 
will  lie  there.  To  the  young  this  is  impious  and  horrible  ;  but 
it  must  be.  Patricia  would  rather  have  sat  in  sackcloth  and 
ashes  by  the  side  of  the  dear  dead  than  have  worn  Irer  ordinary 
gown — that  very  skirt  which  she  had  mended  in  the  sunshine 
on  the  other  side  of  the  gulf,  and  so  many  years  ago  !  But 
sackcloth  and  ashes  and  giving  oneself  up  to  mute  mourning  on 
the  floor  do  not  square  with  the  ordinary  run  of  things  in  daily 
life,  and  she  had  to  bestir  herself;  to  enter  into  consultations 
with  Miss  Pritchard  and  Mother  Jose,  the  one  about  her  mourn- 
ing, the  other  about  the  undertaker  at  Penrose,  to  whom  word 
must  be  sent — to  morrow  being  Mother  Jose's  "  day  in."  A.nd 
when  she  had  read  Aunt  Hamley's  letter,  she  had  to  write  to 
Abbey  Holme  to  tell  them  of  the  loss  that  had  befallen  her. 
The  chances  are  that  without  this  letter  as  a  reminder  she 
would  have  forgotten  her  aunt's  existence  for  the  first  part,  and 
would  then  have  shrunk  from  bringing  herself  before  her  notice 
for  the  second. 

The  answer  came  by  telegram — -Mother  Jose  brought  it  in 
to  save  the  expense  of  the  messenger ;  and  before  Patricia  had 
read  it  herself,  all  Barsands  knew  of  it  and  half  the  village  had 
spelt  it  over.  It  was  short  but  important : 

"Mr.  Hnmlpy  sets  off  to-day  for  Barsands.  He  will  bring 
you  back  with  him." 

Mors  janua  vilce.  Not  only  for  the  beloved  dead  but  also  for 
her.  Through  the  gate  of  his  grave  she  walked  straight  from 
tke  old  to  the  new,  from,  the  known  to  the  unknown,  from  joy- 


VWM.  51 

ous  security  to  doubt  and  dread.  Life  atAunt  Hamley's !  She 
shivered,  and  thought  how  cold  the  nignt  was  and  how  soon 
the  winter  had  come  this  year  !  But  she  was  not  going  to  mope 
and  give  way  for  a  fancy,  she  thought.  She  was  not  of  the  kind 
to  create  spectres  for  want  of  a  braver  resolve  to  meet  cheer- 
fully what  was  before  her.  At  the  worst,  Aunt  Hamley-,was 
her  father's  sister  and  her  dear  dead  uncle's  :  and  with  too  such 
men  for  her  brothers  she  could  not  be  all  bad.  And  then  the 
natural  buoyancy  of  youth  came  in  to  help  her.  She  had 
known  only  love  and  liberty  hitherto ;  and  may  be  love  and 
liberty  would  brighten  out  on  her  from  the  foreboded  gloom  of 
Abbey  Holme.  And,  if  not,  what  was  the  good  of  her  promise 
to  bear  all  things  cheerfully,  if  her  strength  could  not  stand  a 
trial  1  It  was  easy  to  be  brave  in  the  air ;  better  to  prove  by 
deeds  and  be  pr.oved  by  trial ! 

With  this  she  dismissed  herself  and  her  future  from  her 
mind.  And  if  she  had  thought  of  either,  it  had  been  rather  in 
reference  to  being  and  doing  as  her  beloved  uncle  would  have 
wished,  not  because  she  cared  miichatthis  moment  what  would 
or  would  not  become  of  her. 

The  next  day,  just  as  the  evening  was  beginning  to  draw  in, 
a  post-chaise  dashed  through  the  village.  It  was  the  smartest 
chaise  to  be  had  in  Penrose,  with  a  couple  of  postilions  in  rather 
shabby  jackets  ;  bitt  it  was  a  sight  not  often  seen  in  Barsands, 
and  it  brought  the  people  out  as  if  the  Queen  or  Wombwell's 
wild  beasts  had  been  passing  through.  After  stopping  at  the 
Lame  Duck  to  inquire  where  Holdfast  Cottage  might  be  found, 
and  being  told  by  a  dozen  people  at  once,  the  full-fleshed  dark 
haired  man  who  had  put  his  head  out  of  the  window  to  ask 
said,  "  Drive  on  ! "  authoritatively,  and  drew  it  back  again, 
smiling  to  himself  while  the  carriage  dashed  on  to  the  cottage, 
followed  by  all  the  children  of  the  place  yelling  their  lo  paeans 
in  west-country  language  and  with  seaside  lungs. 

Patricia  was  upstairs  in  a  back  room,  and  neither  heard  nor 
saw  the  arrival  ;  but  the  servant  came  rushing  in  to  summon 
her,  breathless  and  jubilant. 

"Your  aunt's  master!"  she  said.  "  And  as  fine  a  looking 
gentleman  as  ever  you  see  1  "  she  added  excitedly  ;  quite  glad 
that  her  young  mistress  had  such  a  showy  piece  of  humanity  for 
her  future  protector. 


52  »  WHAT  WOlTT.D  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"Mr.  Hamley  here ! "  cried  Patricia,  involuntarily  catching 
her  breath.  She  felt  the  room  go  round  and  the  floor  slide 
from  her  feet,  as  she  afterwards  told  Miss  Pritchard ;  who  put 
her  dynamics  right  for  her.  But  she  could  not  afford  to  lose 
time  in  noting  odd  sensations  ;  so,  standing  up  and  clearing  her 
eyes,  pressing  back  something  at  her  heart  as  if  with  a  strong 
hand,  without  waiting  to  arrange  herself,  to  put  up  her  hair  or 
to  put  on  a  ribbon — not  having  the  ordinary  woman's  instinct 
that  way,  though  she  had  done  it  all  for  Gordon — she  ran 
down  stairs  to  the  little  parlour,  for  it  could  not  be  called  a 
drawing-room,  tumbled,  unkempt,  disordered  as  she  was. 

Mr.  Hamley  was  waiting  for  her;  and,  while  waiting,  he  had 
been  examining  with  a  critical  eye  the  extraordinary  collection 
of  rubbish  and  real  curiosities  intermixed,  disposed  by  way  of 
ornamentation  about  the  chimneypiece  f»,nd  on  the  side  table. 
Magnificent  bits  of  coral  were  flanked  by  paltry  sixpenny 
figures  of  lambs  and  dogs  with  broom-stick  tails ;  an  exquis- 
.  itely-carved  vase  in  jade-stone  had  for  its  pedestal  a  common 
"seashore  pebble  worn  flat  enough  for  a  stand ;  the  oleographs 
distributed  by  certain  weekly  ^papers  were  pinned  unframed 
against  the  walls,  but  Patricia  had  hung  them  round  with 
wreaths  of  yellowing  oak-leaves  and  fronds  and  tufts  of  sea- 
weed, green  and  scarlet  and  duller  purple ;  which  was  an 
arrangement  that  betokened  taste  if  it  also  spoke  of  poverty. 
Mr.  Hamley,  however,  did  not  respect  taste  if  allied  with 
poverty.  What  he  liked  was  a  good,  heavy,  handsome,  gilded 
frame  about  a  fine  strong-coloured  oil-painting  ;  not  your  hand- 
ful of  withered  leaves  and  slimy  seaweeds  festooned  with  pins 
round  a  twopenny-halfpenny  print  given  away  by  a  weekly. 

"  Not  worth  a  pound  the  lot !  "  he  was  saying  to  himself  as 
Patricia  opened  the  door  and  came  in. 

She  saw  a  tall,  largely-framed  man  with  dark  curled  hair ;  a 
clean-shaven  face  save  for  a  pair  of  thick  whiskers  that  met  in 
a  frill  under  his  chin  ;  small,  deeply-set  eyes,  bright,  black,  and 
keen  ;  a  large  obtrusive  kind  of  nose  ;  and  heavy,  clumsy, 
cracked-looking  lips  that  squared  out  when  he  spoke,,,  and 
showed  a  close  row  of  sharp  rodent  shaped  teeth  and  all  his 
upper  gums  when  he  smiled.  He  was  a  fine-built  man,  with  an 
unmistakable  look  of  good  living  and  prosperity  about  him. 
•In  the  smooth  lines  of  his  sleek  figure,  tending  to  stoutness, 


NOVJE  VTTM.  63 

bnt  as  yet  only  sleek  ;  in  his  showy  attitudes  and  parabolic 
gestures;  in  the  measured  accents  of  his  level  artificial  voice; 
in  the  glitter  of  the  massive  gold  chain  across  his  ample  front, 
the  sparkle  of  the  huge  diamonds  on  his  large  hands ;  from  the 
cleanly-drawn  parting  of  his  shining  hair  down  to  the  tips  of 
his  shining  boots,  and  in  the  superb  fineness  and  glossiness  of 
all  his  clothes,  could  be  read  the  self-complacency  of  the  man 
and  the  success  of  his  life.  He  was  Mr.  Hamley  of  Abbey 
Holme  ;  and  he  liked  people  to  know  it.  He  was  not  ashamed 
to  add,  the  man  who  had  begun  life  as  an  errand-boy  on  six- 
pence a  day;  the  son  of  a  brewer's  drayman,  born  in  a  hovel 
and  bred  in  a  stable;  but  who  by  industry,  good  conduct,  tact, 
and  natural  ability,  had  risen  to  be  the  rich  brewer  of  Milltown 
and  the  husband  of  Admiral  Sir  Robert  Kemball's  daughter. 
He  was  a  self  made  man,  and  he  gloried  in  his  maker,  and 
asked  the  world  to  glorify  him  too. 

He  had  early  decided  on  his  tactics,  which  were  to  stick  to 
the  place  where  he  had  known  hunger  and  had  made  a  colossal 
fortune,  and  to  force  society  there  to  recognise  and  admit  him. 
The  closed  paradises  of  his  past  were  the  only  ones  the  gates  of 
which  he  especially  cared  to  open  ;  and  he  would  rather  be  re- 
ceived on  an  equality  by  the  poorest  Milltown  gentleman  whose 
horse  he  had  once  been  glad  to  hold  for  a  few  pence,  than  be 
courted  by  people  whom  he  had  not  known,  and  who  had  not 
known  him  in  his  bare-footed  days.  Milltown  was  his  world  ; 
and  that  world  he  had  set  himself  to  conquer.  And  he  had 
succeeded. 

He  put  his  face  into  the  proper  expression  of  sympathy  as 
Patricia  entered ;  but  in  spite  of  himself  a  look  of  surprise  took 
the  precedence,  and  his  forced  sympathy  dropped  away  like  a 
mask.  He  had  not  expected  to  see  anything  so  beautiful ;  and 
he  showed  that  he  had  not.  Not  that  hers  was  the  kind  of 
beauty  he  liked  best ;  certainly  not.  He  liked  very  fair  women ; 
gliding,  caressing,  insinuating  women ;  women  who  were  timid 
and  who  screamed  easily  ;  women  he  could  protect  and  domi- 
nate, and  who  confessed  his  masculine  superiority  even  when 
they  put  on  pretty  airs  of  social  queenhood — he  giving  up  to 
them  this  social  queenhood  in  consideration  of  holding  all  the 
other  sceptres  in  a  sheaf  together ;  women  who  were  fond  of 
warmth  aud  good  living,  luxurious  seats,  fine  clothes  and  spark- 


54  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

ling  jewelery ;  women  he  could  buy  with  gifts  and  subdue 
through  their  senses,  as  he  could  make  cats  purr  by  pleasant 
treatment.  He  hated  all  enthusiasm  in  women,  save  maybe  for 
trivial  amusements  ;  all  decision  of  opinion  ;  all  power  of  rea- 
soning or  show  of  learning ;  and  the  doctrine  of  their  rights 
(which  however  he  did  not  understand)  was  anathema  marana- 
tha.  He  easily  forgave  a  little  graceful  deception,  especially  if 
in  his  own  favour.  Indeed,  he  used  to  say  that  truth  was  in- 
delicate in  women — not  that  he  ever  called  them  anything  but 
ladies — and  that  nature  meant  them  to  fib  as  she  meant  canaries 
to  sing.  Neither  was  he  severe  on  their  want  of  honour  in  love 
affairs  or  money  matters,  providing  they  did  not  jilt  nor  cheat 
him.  He  called  them  little  "  rascals,"  when  they  were  found 
out ;  but  if  they  were  pretty  he  laughed  as  at  a  good  joke.  He 
had  an  idea  too  that  they  should  take  very  short  steps — pretty 
pit-a-pat  useless  kind  of  steps — in  fact,  a  Chinese  woman's  walk 
modified  ;  and  that  they  should  carry  their  heads  bent  down- 
wards, looking  up  from  under  their  eyebrows  shyly.  And  he 
liked  trim,  well-buckled  figures  where  the  art  of  the  stay-maker 
and  the  milliner  was  apparent ;  and  the  only  kind  of  appearance 
that  fascinated  him  was  that  called  stylish. 

Patricia  fulfilled  none  of  these  personal  requirements.  She 
bore  her  head  straight  and  .her  shoulders  square,  and  looked 
out  frem  her  large,  well-opened  eyes  held  quite  level.  She 
walked  with  a  swift,  free  step,  and  took  what  he  mentally 
noted  as  strides.  She  was  not  especially  neat ;  rather  the  re- 
verse ;  and  her  manners  were  singularly  fearless,  and  \vith  an 
air  of  independence  and  unconsciousness  that  set  her  at  odds 
with  her  aunt's  husband  at  first  sight.  Her  hair  was  in  -loose 
masses  that  showed  the  shine  and  varied  auburn  tints  and 
broad  rich  wave  upon  it,  such  as  artists  would  have  loved ;  but  as 
it  was  not  smooth  and  silky  like  Dora's  blonde  and  elaborate 
chignon,  nor  crimped  and  curled  like  Mrs.  Hamley's  faded  tresses, 
to  Mr.  Hamley's  eyes  it  looked  undressed.  As  to  her  figure, 
to  be  sure  she  was  as  upright  as  a  dart,  yet  as  supple  as  a 
willow  wand;  all  her  lines  were  long  and  slender,  and  she 
was  exquisitely  proportioned;  but  sire  evidently  wore  no  stays, 
her  dress  was  of  poor  material  and  badly  made,  she  was  neithei 
trim  nor  well-buckled,  and,  in  fact,  she  was  not  finished  off  any 
where.  That  was  the  word — she  was  not  finished  off ;  still  in 


VOVM  VITA  •*  55 

the  rough  ;  good  material  but  having  no  value,  no  more  than 
an  uncut  diamond  or  a  block  of  brute  marble — -or  a  pocketful  of 
hops  thought  Mr.  Hamley,  before  it  had  seen  the  malt. 

All  this  would  come;  Mrs.  Hamley  would  know  how  to  do 
it,  and  Dora's  example  would  complete  the  process.  Mean- 
while he  had  to  condole,  not  criticise  ;  to  forget  that  the  pretty 
girl  before  him  had  neither  stays  nor  style,  that  her  hair  was 
undressed  and  her  whole  person  unfinished,  in  his  efforts  to 
make  himself  agreeable,  and  to  impress  on  her  untutored  mind 
that  her  aunt's  husband  was  by  no  means  a  common  sort  of 
man,  and  that  she  might  hold  herself  fortunate  in  falling  into 
such  good  hands. 

"My  dear!"  he  exclaimed,  with  that  kind  of  enunciation 
which  inakes  all  the  leading  words- end  in  h,  "I  cannot  express 
how  truly  grieved  Mrs.  Hamley  and  myself  are  at  your  bereave- 
ment. Such  a  sudden  termination  ! — with  no  time  for  prepara 
tion  !" 

"  He  was  prepared,"  said,  Patricia  hastily. 

Mr.  Hamley  knew  veiy  little  of  religion,  experimentally  or 
intellectually.  Nevertheless  he  had  a  few  catch-words,  and  the 
probable  lost  condition  of  a  soul  suddenly  called  away  was  one 
of  his  strongholds. 

He  smiled  with  a  kind  of  bland  sorrow.  "I  devoutly  hope 
so,"  he  said,  his  voice  showing  that  his  hope  had  not  taken  on 
itself  a  very  lively  assurance. 

"  He  was  good.  No  more  is  wanted  than  that !  "  said  Pa- 
tricia, looking  him  straight  between  the  eyes. 

He  hated  to  be  looked  at  straight  between  the  eyes,  espe- 
cially by  women.  He  thought,  too,  she  was  defiant  when  she 
looked  at  him  so  fearlessly  and  spoke  up  so  warmly.  She  was 
not :  she  was  only  in  earnest. 

"  The  Bible  tells  us  more,  I  think,"  he  said  a  little  tartly. 

This  first  introductory  interview  had  not  begun  on  velvet. 

"  Oh,  do  riot  speak  as  if  you  doubted  !"  she  said  in  real  pain. 
"There  never  was  a  better  man  than  Uncle  Robert !  I  ought 
to  know — who  so  well  ?  "  she  added,  her  voice  breaking. 

"Ah  !  well !  we  will  converse  no  more  about  that  aspect  of 
the  case,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  with  his  soothing  manner,  taking 
her  hand  in  his ;  and  his  was  large  and  fleshy  and  moist.  "  But 
you  must  resign  yourself,  my  dear  young  lady,  and  remember 


66  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOTT  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

that  n«>  amount  of  tears  not  if  you  cried  those  fine  eyes  of  yours 
•  •in  of  yoin  Ix-ad.  will  bring  a  dead  man  back  to  life  again.  We 
must  Ke  reasonable  even  in  our  mourning.  Don't  you  agree  to 
this,  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Patricia,  controlling  herself  without  much  effort. 
Something  seemed  to  pass  over  her  that  made  it  almost  sacri- 
lege tn  show  more  of  her  heart  to  this  man.  "  And  yet,"  she 
added  with  perhaps  a  natural  Piovenient  of  opposition,  "it 
seems  strange  to  talk  of  reason  at  such  a  time." 

'•  Reason  always  is  strange  to  ladies,"  said  Mr.  Hamley. 
"  La  lies  feel  ;  they  do  not  reason." 

The  girl  looked  at  him  in  frank  amazement.  Truly  his  words 
were  plain  English  enough;  hut  the  meaning  of  them]  For 
;dl  the  essential  purposes  of  language  he  was  speaking  to  her  in 
a  foreign  tongue  ;  and  her  face  betrayed  her  peiplexity.  He 
caught  her  look  and  it  pleased  him.  It  seemed  to  confess  that 
he  could  teach  her  something,  and  Mr.  Hamley  liked  to  hold 
forth. 

"But  you  will  be  reasonable,  my  dear,"  he  continued  in  that 
strange  mixture  of  fine  words  and  familiar,  not. to  say  vulgar, 
colloquialisms  which  made  up  his  style.  "  I  make  bold  to  as- 
sure myself  of  this.  What  you  have  to  do  now  is  to  reflect  on 
your  position  and  to  make  the  best  of  it.  1  hope  you  will  not 
find  it  such  a  bad  job  in  the  end  as  it  seems  in  the  commence- 
ment. That  is,  1  hope  you  will  find  Abbey  Holme  not  so  very 
unpleasant,  all  thing  considered,  and  that  you  will  be  able  to 
make  your  life  there  to  your  liking."  He  said  this  with  a  smile 
and  a  little  bow,  as  if  he  had  been  talking  of  a  cup  of  tea. 

"  Thank  you  very  much,"  answered  Patricia,  looking  into 
his  face.  "  1  hope  rather  1  shall  be  what  you  and  my  aunt  will 
like." 

"  No  doubt,  my  dear,  after  a  training  in  our  harness.  When 
Mrs.  Hamley  has  put  her  touch  on  you,  and  dear  Dora  has 
shown  you  what  a  real  lady  should  be,  I  make  no  kind  of  doubt 
we  shall  be  satisfied  with  you.  Your  aunt  must  take  you  in 
hand,  and  I  bet  that  before  long  you  will  be  turned  out  the 
real  article  too." 

"  Yes,"  said  Patricia  vaguely. 

"  We  must  get  the  angles  down/'  said  Mj.  Hamley,  rubbing 
bis  bauds. 


VITM.  57 

"  Yes,"  she  answered  in  the  same  vague  way,  wondering  what 
the  man  meant. 

"Mrs  Hamley  is  a  disciplinarian,  my  dear;  a  tight  hand,  as 
you'll  find  ;  a  good  soul  though,  and  a  real  lady  ;  but,"  plucking 
at  her  loose  sleeve  and  ill-cut  bodice,  "  she'll  not  stand  thus  kind 
of  thing  long  !  Mrs.  Hamley  likes  what  the  captain  would  have 
called  ship-shape,  brailed  up;  don't  you  understand?  Never 
mind  now  ;  you  will  come  right  in  time,  and  meanwhile  we 
must  do  our  business.  And  the  first  bit  of  business  to  attend 
to,  if  you'll  excuse  me,  is  the  fortification  of  the  inner  man. 
Can  your  servant  cook  me  a  chop  1  I  am  a  plain  masvmyself, 
and  a  well-cooked,  juicy  chop,  witli  a  nicely-done  potato,  steamed 
not  boiled,  satisfies  all  my  wants." 

"  I  am  afraid  we  have  not  such  a  thing  as  a  chop  in  the 
house,"  said  Patricia  in  distress  :  "  we  have  only  a  bit  of  cold 
mutton." 

Mr.  Hamley's  face  darkened. 

"  What  part  ?  saddle  ?"  he  asked. 

"  No ;  1  have  never  seen  a  saddle  of  mutton  in  my  life,"  she 
answered  innocently.  "  It  is  a  bit  of  the  breast,  and  I  am  afraid 
not  very  nice.  We  have  not  a' great  choice  here." 

"  But  you  knew  that  I  was  coming  ? "  he  said. 

He  was  gravely  displeased.  A  man  of  Mr.  Hamley's  stamp 
thinks  much  of  fatted  calves,  both  for  honour  and  toothsome- 
ness  ;  and  a  cold  breast  of  mutton,  with  no  special  preparation 
for  his  arrival,  was  a  sin  greater  than  half  a  dozen  falsehoods 
would  have  been. 

M  I  daresay  I  can  get  something  at  Mrs.  Jose's ''  then  said 
Patricia,  her  face  brightening  at  the  thought ;  but  Mr.  Hamley 
stopped  her  as  she  was  about  to  rush  out  of  the  room  tumultu- 
ously. 

Don't  give  yourself  quite  so  much  trouble,  my  dear,"  he  said 
with  a  certain  ill-concealed  irony.  "  I  will,  go  to  the  inn,  and 
you  can  enjoy  your  own  mutton  in  peace.  I  daresay  you  would 
rather  be  alone  at  such  a  time  ;"  with  a  half  sigh  :  "  and,  after 
all,  I  came  to  help,  not  to  make  more  work.  Not  a  word  !  1 
shall  go  to  that  house  we  pulled  up  at ;  I  presume  they  can  toss 
me  up  some  little  thing  that  will  suffice  ;  and  then  1  will  return 
to  you  and  take  off  my  coat  to  it." 

Oft  which  he  took  his .  hat  and  conveyed  himself  out  of  the 


68  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?  " 

room.  ITo  other  word  would  give  an  adequate  idea  of  the  showy 
dignity  and  ostentation  with  which  he  walked  across  the  shabby 
little  parlour,  which  indeed  he  seemed  to  fill,  and  stooped  his 
head  in  the  doorway,  though  there  was  no  necessity  for  him  to 
do  so — he  could  have  passed  through  well  enough.  And  when 
he  had  gone  Patricia  sat  down  and  took  a  long  breath,  feeling 
as  if  a  weight  had  been  taken  off  her  breast,  as  when  we  fight 
off  that  shadowy  hand  at  night  which  is  throttling  us  in  our 
sleep. 

This  then  was  her  aunt's  husband,  the  uncle  who  was  to  be 
her  friend  and  guide  and  guardian  in  place  of  the  dear  dead 
whom  she  had  reverenced  so  simply  and  loved  so  truly  !  It  was 
an  instinct  and  not  an  act  of  reason  that  led  her  feet  upstairs, 
when  she  heard  the  garden  gate  shut  as  Mr.  Hamley  Swaggered 
out.  She  went  to  her  uncle  dead,  as  she  would  have  gone  to  him 
living,  for  counsel  and  if  need  be  reproof.  And  when  Mr. 
Hamley  came  again  he  found  her  with  red  eyes  truly,  but  more 
cheerful  somehow  than  she  was  before.  And  he  said  in  his 
letter  to  his  wife  that  evening^:  "  I  am  happy  to  state  that  my 
coming  has  been  of  marked  advantage  to  your  niece,  and  that 
she  has  already  picked  up  wonderful." 

Once  installed  master  of  the  situation  nothing  could  exceed 
Mr.  Hamley's  energy  and  kindness.  He  took  everything  on 
himself  in  a  natural  matter-of-fact  way  as  if  he  had  been  born  to 
the  work..  His  business  faculty  came  in -as  almost  another 
sense,  and  reminded  Patricia  so  often  of  what  Gordon  had  said 
about  the  fortune-telling  of  lawyers.  But  valuable  though  he 
was,  he  extinguished  her  in  the  neatest  manner  possible.  She 
had  not  a  word  to  say  on  any  matter ;  and  if  she  ventured  an 
opinion,  he  told  her  that  was  his  business,  not  hers,  that  two 
could  not  be  masters,  and  that  she  was  to  give  herself  no  kind 
of  trouble,  but  leave  all  that  to  him — he  was  there  for  that 
purpose.  For  what  else  were  they,  great  hairy  men,  born,  but 
to  take  care  of  the  ladies  1  He  wished  her  to  sit  down  and 
amuse  herself;  and  he  would  do  all  the  work  if  she  would  only 
be  quiet  and  enjoy  herself. 

What  could  she  ansu  er  1  She  could  not  but  feel  grateful ; 
he  meant  it  kindly  ;  but  still  she  wished  that  she  might  have 
been  employed  too  in  these  last  arrangements  of  the  old  life — 
these  last  gatherings*  of  the  dead  rosea.  Lavislfin  his  profea- 


TITM.  59 

sions  of  consideration,  irresistible  in  his  high-handed  assump- 
tions, he  swept  heraside'out  of  the  path  altogether,  and  Patricia 
suddenly  found  herself  plunged  from  a  life  full  to  the  brim  of 
activity  and  love  into  a  void  where  were  only  echoes  and  reflec- 
tions. 

In  one  thing,  however,  she  was  resolute ;  she  would  go  to  the 
funeral.  Mr.  Hamley  thought  it  indelicate  in  a  lady  even  to 
wish  to  go ;  but  she  was  firm  ;  and  in  the  first  real  conflict  of 
wills  between  them  his  had  to  go  down  before  hers.  He  owed 
her  a  grudge  for  it,  and  never  quite  forgave  her.  For  the  matt.er 
of  her  following  however,  all  the  village  went,  coastguards, 
fisherfolks,  the  Misses  Pritchard  and  all ;  so  that  her  absence 
would  have  been  remarked  not  to  her  advantage.  This  con- 
course, poor  as  it  was,  gratified  Mr.  Hamley.  It  pleased  him 
to  see  that  his  brother-in-law  had  been  popular ;  arid  it  also 
pleased  him  to  have  such  a  good  opportunity  for  showing  him- 
self off.  He  was  conscious  of  his  height  and  breadth  and  glossy 
black  clothes,  and  general  air  of  substance  and  prosperity  :  and 
as  no  homage  came  amiss  to  him,  it  made  him  feel  quite  his  own 
man  again  when  he  saw  the  women  whisper  together  as  they 
looked  at  him,  and  the  men  cast  those  appraising  glances  as  he 
passed  which  measured  him  and  weighed  him,  and  found  him 
satisfactory.  He  was  the  make-believe  hero  of  the  day ;  and 
though  the  real  hero  was  the  one  they  loved,  he  could  afford 
the  rivalship  on  the  principle  of  the  dead  lion  and  the  live  dog. 

The  Captain  had*  left  no  will.  Such  men  as  he  never  do  leave 
a  will,  except  perhaps  one  they  themselves  write  out  on  a  sheet 
of  note-paper,  without  witnesses  to  the  signature  ;  also  partly 
because  such  men  seldom  have  anything  to  leave.  Of  a 
surety  the  poor  Captain  had  left  neither  will  nor  effects ;  so  that 
all  Aunt  Hamley's  husband  had  to  do  was  to  arrange  the  details 
of  the  funeral,  pay  the  undertaker's  bill  presented  at  the  con- 
clusion, see  what  small  debts  were  owing  in  the  village,  and  sell 
off  the  furniture  to  meet  them. 

This  was  the  hardest  part  to  Patricia.  In  vain  she  besought 
him  not  to  have  a  sale,  but  to  let  her  give  the  things  away. 

"  Give  them  away  !  "  he  said.  "  My  dear  young  lady,  you 
must  be  dreaming !  Why  give  ? " 

"  I  know  the  people,  and  they  are  all  so  poor,"  pleaded 
Patricia. 


60  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO.  I.OVE  ?  " 

"If  they  are  too  poor  to  buy,  then  they  will  not  spend  their 
money,"  Mr.  Hamley  said;  "and  the  other  way  on.  Don't 
you  trouble  yourself  about  them.  They  can  take  care  of  them- 
selve^ ;  and  you  may  be  sure  every  one  of  them  has  an  old 
stocking  somewhere  up  the  chimney  with  a  hoard  in  it  that 
would  astonish  you.  Bless  you  !  I  know  the  class  as  well  aa 
I  know  my  alphabet ;  always  crying  Peter  Grievous,  and  put- 
ting money  in  the  bank,  the  rogues  !  You  leave  them  alone, 
and  turn  your  own  pennies  when  you  can." 

"  But  it  seems  so  disgraceful  to  sell  to  them,"  she  said. 

She  had  been  brought  up  practically  like  a  good  democrat  j 
and  she  was  a  good  democrat  by  nature  as  well  as  training ; 
which  did  not  hinder  a  fine  flash  of  the  true  old  spirit  that  was 
once  known  as  "Noblesse  oblige."  So  disgraceful,  for  the 
comparatively  rich  to  make  money  by  the  poor ! — so  far  the 
better  thing  to  give  royally  to  those  who  needed,  instead  of 
chaffering  for  the  miserable  pence  they  could  not  afford  to  spend. 

When  she  said  all  this,  Mr.  Hamley  put  his  hands  into  his 
pockets  and  laughed  aloud.  He  could  not  stop  himself,  he 
said  ;  such  an  extraordinary  idea ! — quite  a  backwood's  kind 
of  notion.  To  give  away  your  property  when  you  could  make 
it  into  money  ! — to  care  two  straws  whether  people  were  richer 
or  poorer  than  yourself  so  long  as  you  make  your  market  of 
them  !  The  dear  young  lady  was  fit  to  be  carried  about  in  a 
show  !  Lord  !  it  was  lucky  for  her  that  he  had  come  to  save 
her  from  herself  !  And  as  for  making  presents  to  any  of  them, 
the  coastguards  or  the  old  women  or  any  man-Jack  alive,  not 
he,  not  a  farthing  !  They  had  made  a  pretty  penny  out  of  the 
old  Captain  when  he  was  alive,  no  fear!  and  now  he,  Mr. 
Hamley,  as  the  orphan's  guardian — with  a  flourish — would 
save  her  little  inheritance  in  every  way  he  could,  and  do  the  best 
for  her  he  was  able  under  the  circumstances. 

So,  in  spite  of  all  she  could  say,  the  sale  was  arranged  and 
took  place  ;  and  everything  was  sold,  save  one  or  two  intrinsi- 
cally valuable  "curios"  which  Mr.  Hamley  selected  as  "agree- 
able memorials  for  your  aunt  of  her  poor  brother." 

All  told,  it  was  not  a  weighty  matter.  When  the  last  ac- 
count was  settled,  and  just  as  the  fly  was  preparing  to  take 
them  away,  Mr.  Hamley  handed  Patricia  the  net  balance — 
nineteen  pounds  odd — as  her  sole  independent  fortune. 


NOVA  VITA  61 

"  Keep  it,  my  dear,"  he  said,  when  Patricia,  full  of  youthful 
honour,  also  full  of  youthful  distaste  to  its  source,  wanted  him 
to  take  that  sum  as  part  payment  of  her  prospective  expenses. 
"  Make  it  go  as  far  as  you  can,  but  keep  it.  Remember  it  is 
all  of  your  own  that  you  possess.  When  it  is  spent  you  will 
have  to  come  to  me  to  replenish  your  purse.  I  wish  to  impress 
this  on  your  mind.  I  am  well  off — I  may  indeed  say  very  well 
off — but  I  do  not  encourage  extravagance.  I  know  what  it  is 
to  earn  sixpence  a  day  and  live  on  it;  but  I  climbed  up,  you 
see,  and  got  pretty  well  ahead  by  my  "own  exertions ;  and  I 
always  advise  other  people  to  do  the  same." 

"  Indeed,  Mr.  Hamley,  I  am  willing  and  ready  to  do  anything 
— that  I  can,"  said  Patricia,  with  a  sudden  hesitancy  that 
explained  everything. 

"  No  doubt " — he  stuck  his  thumbs  into  his  waistcoat  arm- 
holes.  "  But  that  is  just  where  the  hitch  is — what  can  you  do  ?" 

She  turned'pale.     "  Nothing !  "  she  said  looking  down. 

"  Of  course  not !  I  knew  that ;  only  you  need  riot  have  con- 
fessed it.  Such  an  education  as  yours,  scrambling  and  rambling 
about  the  country  like  a  tinker's  daughter,  getting -wrecked 
here  and  tossed  like  a  bale  of  cotton  there,  and  knowing  no 
better  than  to  have  a  cold  breast  of  mutton  for  a  gentleman's 
dinner  after  along  journey — how  could  you  have  learnt  any- 
thing] Why  you  have  not  learnt  even  your  own  trade  of  lady  ! 
But  never  mind.  I  confess  I  should  not  like  to  see  dear  Dora 
obliged  to  work  for  her  living — ladies  ought  to  be  worked  for," 
— he  put  this  in  gallantly,  standing  there  on*  his  six  feet  one 
and  pondergus  breadth  of  shoulders ;  "  and  your  aunt  may  have 
the  same  feeling  for  you.  If  she  has,  Abbey  Holme  is  large 
enough  for  you,  and,"  jingling  the  money  in  his  pocket,  "  the 
Hamley  funds  can  bear  your  additional  burden,  I  daresay. 
Now  here  comes  the  fly.  Are. all  your  things  ready?  Say 
good-bye,  my  dear,  to  the  old  and  make  your  courtesy  to  the 
new.  No !  no  tears  if  you  please.  I  can't  abide  a  crying 
lady — it  makes  one  damp  !  "  To  himself  he  said,  almost  aloud 
— "  Lord  !  that  the  fool  should  cry  to  exchange  this  horrid  hole 
for  Abbey  Holme." 


62  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTEK  VIL 

THE  HOME-COMINa. 

tHE  journey  from  Barsands  to  Milltown  was  a  cross-coun- 
try one ;  consequently  full  of  delays,  and  tedious. 
There  had  not  been  much  either  in  the  scenery  or  the 
circumstances  to  amuse  Mr.  Hamley  or  interest  Patricia. 
When  he  had  pulled  up  both  the  windows,  tucked  him- 
self and  his  charge  well  round  in  heavy  railway  rugs,  bought 
the  day's  papers  for  himself  and  a  trashy  novel  for  her,  he  had 
done  all  that  politeness  and  the  circumstances  of  the  case 
demanded  of  him ;  and  Patricia  had  borne  the  feeling  of 
oppression  and  suffocation  consequent  on  his  care  as  the  sacri- 
fice of  self  due  to  him  for  gratitude.  But  not  even  gratitude 
could  make  her  read  the  book  he  gave  her.  Her  education 
had  been  lamentably  neglected  with  regard  to  modern  fiction ; 
and,  save  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  one  or  two  of  Dickens's  earlier 
works,  she  had  never  read  a  novel  in  her  life,  and  had  no 
desire  to  begin.  They  seemed  such  wretched  make-believes 
to  her — much  as  an  opera  seems  to  a  young  person  of  ordinary 
common-sense  perception  and  a  keen  idea  of  fitness,  who  sees 
and  hears  for  the  first  time  the  hero  die  in  an  aria  and  the 
heroine  go  mad  in  a  recitative.  All  she  did,  therefore,  was  to 
look  out  of  the  window ;  watching  while  she  could ;  feel- 
ing, as  every  station  with  its  well-known  name  was  passed 
and  left  behind,  that  she  was  lengthening  her  chain  of  sorrow, 
cutting  off  so  much  from  her  life  ;  and  when  she  could  no  longer 
watch,  dreaming.  Meanwhile  Mr.  Hatnley  slept,  and  when 
he  slept  he  snored. 

It  was  a  drear,  dull  day ;  one  of  those  late  autumn  days  which 
seem  to  have  suddenly  leapt  into  winter  since  yesterday.  Here 
and  there  a  tree,  bright  with  gold  and  brown,  had  kept  its  foli- 
age in  a  loose  and  feathery  way  still  about  its  branches  •  but 
for  the  most  part  only  a  few  deep  red  or  russet-purple  leaves 
fluttered  in  the  chilly  air,  like  the  last  good-byes  of  a  friend. 


THE    HOME-COMING.  63 

Clumps  of  square-headed  rag-wort,  a  few  late  hawkweeds,  and 
some  shabby  tufts  of  milfoil  were  the  sole  representatives  of 
the  gracious  flowers  of  spring  and  summer.  The  day  was  raw 
and  damp.  Not  a  bird  twittered  in  the  hedges ;  and  the  leaden 
sky  looked  as  if  it  would  never  shine  again.  All  this  dreary 
dullness,  all  this  melancholy  of  earth  and  sky,  seemed'  quite 
natural  to  Patricia.  She  would  have  been  surprised  if  the  sun 
had  shone,  and  the  birds  had  sung,  and  the  earth  had  been 
gay  and  sweet  with  flowers.  It  was  not  a  conscious  thought, 
but  it  was  there  all  the  same — the  thought  that  nature  was  in 
mourning  as  well  as  herself ;  and  that  her  uncle's  death  was 
known  to  more  than  the  world  at  Barsands. 

It  was  evening  when  they  reached  the  station  which  served 
Milltown  for  its  point  of  contact  with  the  outer  world.  In  old 
days  when  railroads  were  considered  vulgar  by  some  and  im- 
moral by  others,  Milltown  had  resolutely  refused  to  be  polluted 
by%  iron  and  steam.  The  clergyman  had  preached  on  the  dan- 
gers to  be  dreaded  by  the  influx  of  navvies ;  speaking  of  them 
— poor  honest  fellows  ! — as  if  they  had  been  brigands  or  bur- 
glars; the  ladies  were  afraid  that  their  horses  would  be  fright- 
ened by  the  engine,  and  foresaw  the  most  frightful  catastro- 
phes ;  and  the  gentlemen  objected  to  the  "  strange  blood" 
which  the  line  would  introduce  among  them.  Social  influence 
— always  strong  in  such  a  place  as  Milltown — had  therefore 
managed  to  secure  intact  the  exclusiveness  which  had  been  one 
of  the  characteristics  of  this  little  aristocratic  south-coast  queen 
of  the  sea.  A  station  nine  miles  off  was  quite  near  enough  for 
the  conservative  respectabilities  which  ruled  in  Milltown;  and, 
though  some  now  rather  regretted  this  exclusiveness — they 
were  the  people  who  did  not  keep  carriages — most  gtood  by 
their  colours,  and  thought  they  and  their  fathers  had  decided 
well  in  the  past.  These  were  the  people  with  carriages  and 
horses,  who  were  able  to  leave  home  as  often  as  they  liked,  and 
get  abroad  all  the  variety  that  home  denied  them.  To  them 
it  was  shocking  to  contemplate  the  invasion  of  their  cared-for, 
well-trimmed,  garden-like  valley  by  hordes  of  excursionists 
from  the  neighbouring  towns;  and  the  idea  of  retired  trades- 
men, aping  gentility,  being  enabled  to  rent  houses,  or  maybe 
buy  land  and  build  amongst  their  own  sacred  seats,  was  one 
not  to  be  borne  for  an  instant.  Whether  by  opening  up  mar- 


64  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

kets  and  thus  causing  a  brisker  trade  a  railway  would  do 
the  farmers  and  smaller  shop-keepers  good,  was  not  an  item  in 
their  calculations.  It  would  bring  strange  residents,  London 
visitors  and  cheap-trip  excursionists;  and  the  Milltown  gentry 
wanted  none  of  them. 

When  the  train  deposited  Patricia  and  her  companion  they 
found  the  Hamley  carriages  and  the  Hamley  servants  waiting 
for  them.  Their  arrival  caused  that  excitement  which  the 
coming  of  the  rich  men  of  the  neighbourhood  always  causes  in 
such  places ;  and  the  station-master  and  the  two  porters  bustled 
about  and  ran  hither  and  thither  to  serve  the  owner  of  Abbey 
Holme  with  alarcity  and  zeal.  Flies  round  the  honey-pot  they 
buzzed  with  expectant  emphasis ;  and  to  do  him  justice  the 
great  man  paid  for  their  buzzing  liberally.  Though  by  no  means 
generous  by  nature,  pride  disposed  Mr.  Hamley  to  public  acts  of 
ostentatious  liberality;  and  he  understood  that  a  character 
must  be  paid  for  as  well  as  other  things  more  material.  He 
was  thus  quoted  by  some  as  the  freest-hearted  gentleman 
of  the  district ;  while  others  with  whom  he  had  graver  busi- 
ness transactions,  spoke  of  him  between  their  teeth  as — well  ! 
one  who  would  skin  a  flint  and  make  broth  of  the  remainder. 
Besides,  small  as  the  triumph  was,  he  was  pleased  that  Patri- 
cia should  see  the  estimation  in  which  he  was  held  when  at 
home.  He  was  aware  that  he  had  failed  to  impress  her  very 
profoundly  so  far  as  he  had  gone  yet,  and  he  thought  that 
these  evidences  of  his  local  dignity  would  do  her  good. 

All  she  noticed  however  was,  that  the  men  seemed  sickeningly 
servile ;  and  she  wished  they  had  not  bowed  so  low  or  said 
"sir"  so  often.  He,  not  knowing  this,  was  wonderfully  affable 
to-day,  with  the  affability  of  a  superior  person  condescending  to 
his  brethren  of  low  estate  ;  and  the  honey  ran  over  at  all  sides, 
to  the  satisfaction  of  the  limp-backed  flies  that  gathered  it. 

Handed  ostentatiously  to  the  carriage,  Patricia  stepped  in 
with  the  wrong  foot  first;  by  which  she  entangled  herself  in 
her  dress  and  had  to  untwist  herself  before  she  sat  down.  The 
result  was  not  unlike  the  action  of  a  dog  turning  round  on  the 
hearth-rug  while  making  his  imaginary  bed. 

"  We  must  have  you  instructed  how  to  step  into  a  carriage, 
my  dear,"  said  Air.  Hamley  blandly,  when  they  had  fairly  rolled 
away. 


THE    HOME-COMING.  65 

"Yes!"  she  answered.  "Is  there  a  right  and  a  wrong 
way?" 

*'  Is  there  a  right  and  a  wrong  way  t"  He  gave  a  scornful 
kind  of  snort.  "  Ask  Dora,"  he  added,  in  the  tone  of  one  who 
propounds  something  that  is  indisputable. 

"I  suppose  Dora  understands  all  these  little  things  per- 
fectly 1 "  Patricia  said,  by  way  of  courteous  question. 

"  Little  !  Not  so  very  little,  let  me  tell  you,"  Mr.  Hamley 
answered  hastily.  She  was  touching  his  gods  and  profaning 
his  sacred  shrines.  He  had  not  been  Mrs.  Hamley's  husband 
for  fifteen  years  not  to  have  learnt  the  full  value  of  the  minor 
graces.  "  These  are  things  which  all  ladies  should  understand ; 
and  of  which,  if  you'll  excuse  me  for  saying  so,  you  are  as  ig- 
norant as  a  cat.  You  will  have  to  be  learnt  them  without  delay ; 
and  you  will  never  progress  if  you  commence  by  regarding  them 
as  little." 

"  I  call  them  little  only  in  comparison  with  the  really  great 
things.  I  daresay  they  are  quite  good  and  right  in  themselves, 
only  not  so  important  as  some  others,"  said  Patricia,  with  the 
steady  look  which  Mr.  Hamley  disliked  so  much,  visible  under 
the  carriage-lamp  shining  full  upon  them.  "  Uncle  always  used 
to  say  that  if  we  got  the  main  things  right,  the  rest  would  come 
when  they  were  wanted." 

''  I  do  not  exactly  see  how  the  main  things  as  you  call  them 
— and  I  do  not  know  what  you  mean  either — will  assist  you  to 
step  into  a  carriage  with  the  right  foot  foremost.  And  more 
than  this,  I  cannot  allow  you  to  argue  with  me,"  said  Mr.  Ham- 
ley  in  a  firm,  heavy  voice.  "  There  is  nothing  more  offensive 
to  my  mind  than  an  argufying  lady.  You  will  remember  this 
in  future,  I  am  sure." 

"  But  is  expressing  an  opinion  arguing  t"  asked  Patricia. 

"  There  you  are  !  at  it  again !  My  dear  young  lady  you  are 
positively  dreadful !  I  say  dreadful,  and  I  mean  it.  What 
will  Mrs.  Hamley  say  to  you  1  or  dear  Dora,  the  gentlest  of  her 
sex  ?  Dora  never  argues,  never  objects.  When  Dora  hears 
these  pert  remarks  of  yours  she  will  be  shocked  ;  I  know  she 
will.  A  very  little  shocks  both  Dora  and  Mrs.  Hamley." 

*'  I  will  try  not  to  shock  them,"  said  Patricia,  patient  but  as- 
tounded. Truly  life  was  having  its  new  readings  printed  heavily 
for  her  benefit 


g  "WHAT  AVOfLD  YOr  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  You  must  not  ;  which  is  more  than  trying.  And  for  one 
thing  you  must  really  be  less  radical  than  you  are  now.  You 
are  out-and-out  the  most  independent  radical  for  a  lady  I  have 
ever  seen.  Positively  astonishing  !  And  wherever  you  .could 
have  picked  it  all  up,  and  your  uncle  the  son  of  a  K.C.B.  aud 
the  brother  of  such  a  woman  as  Mrs.  Hamley,  I  don't  know. 

"But  I  am  not  a  radical  at  all,  Mr.  Hamley,"  said  Patricia, 
opening  her  eyes  and  speaking  very  earnestly.  "  I  understand 
nothing  about  politics,  and  am  neither  radical  nor  tory — scarcely 
indeed  know  the  difference  between  them  !" 

"  And  I  say  you  are,"  repeated  Mr.  Hamley,  who  had  used 
the  word  in  a  provincial  and  not  a  political  sense  ;  "  so  let  us 
have  no  more  discussion.  Your  duty  is  to  be  humble-minded 
and  obedient ;  to  order  yourself  lowly  and  reverently  to  all 
your  pastors  and  masters  and  those  who  are  put  in  authority 
over  you,"  he  added,  with  a  happy  reminiscence  of  the  catechism 
as  the  sling  and  stone  he  thought  would  have  most  effect  on 
this  odd  young  person. 

Patricia  was  silent.  She  wondered  why,  when  her  dear 
uncle's  lessons  had  always  awakened  such  a  full  response  in  her 
conscience,  such  a  fervent  desire  and  resolve  to  live  up  to  all  he 
said,  and  had  seemed  to  lift  her  over  every  little  moral  difficulty 
in  which  she  might  have  been  at  the  time,  Mr.  Hamlet's  only 
pained  and  irritated  her.  What  he  said  was  of  course  the  right 
thing  so  far  as  words  went,  but  a  certain  something  in  her  heart 
seemed  to  rebel  rather  than  to  acquiesce. 

"  You  do  not  agree  with  me  } "  then  said  Mr.  Hamley  %vith 
an  unpleasant  smile.  He  had  been  watching  her  face  with  its 
large  eyes  fixed  on  the  darkening  line  of  hedge  and  bank,  and 
her  lips  closed  tighter  than  her  lips  were  wont  to  close.  "  You 
do  not  perceive  the  truth  of  what  I  say  about  humble-minded- 
ness  and  obedience  1 " 

"  Yes  I  do,"  said  Patricia,  still  looking  out  of  the  window. 

"  But  you  are  annoyed  that  I  have  said  it  ? w 

For  a  minute  she  was  silent.  Then  she  turned  to  him 
frankly ;  "  No,  I  am  not,"  she  said,  and  put  both  her  hands 
into  his. 

"Very  right,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  with  an  indescribable  as- 
sumption of  superiority.  He  felt  he  had  conquered  and  had 
driven  in  the  thin  edge  of  the  wedga  "  But  you  need  not  put 


THE    HOME  COMING. 

your  hands  into  a  gentleman's  when  you  speak.  Ladies  do  not 
do  such  things  in  good  society,"  he  added,  with  a  patronising 
smile  ;  not  unkindly,  rather  the  contrary  ;  the  smile  of  a  man 
who  accepts  his  obligations  and  fulfils  them  at  any  cost,  even 
that  of  being  cold  and  disagreeable  in  checking  a  youthful  en- 
thusiasm towards  himself,  which  however  pleasant  was  per- 
haps dangerous. 

No  more  was  said  after  this  ;  and  the  carriage  rattled  on  in 
silence  till  at  last  it  turned  out  of  the  main  road  into  one 
narrower  and  even  smoother,  flanked  on  each  side  by  high 
banks  topped  with  hedges,  which,  dark  as  it  was,  Patricia  saw 
were  closely  trimmed  and  sheared. 

And  here  Mr.  Hamley  said  graciously,  "  We  are  close  on 
home  now.  Your  home  too,  my  dear,  as  well  as  mine,  if  you 
are  wise  and  will  learn  how  to  conduct  yourself  like  a  lady 
should.  And  I  hope  you  will  find  it  so,  till,"  laughing,  "  you 
meet  Mr.  Right,  and  then  I  reckon  it  will  be,  '  Up  Killick  ! ' 
and  away  in  no  time  !  " 

While  he  was  saying  this,  Patricia  understanding  only  his 
words  and  not  the  sense  of  them,  they  were  driving  through 
the  lodge-gates  with  the  woman  who  opened  them  cuit- 
esying  to  the  very  ground ;  then  through  the  chestnut 
avenue  of  the  park,  and  so  to  the  gates  of  the  garden-lodge,  with 
another  woman  to  open  them  also  curtesying  to  the  ground  ; 
up  the  shrubbery- drive,  and  finally  to  the  broad  sweep  before 
the  hall  door. 

The  instant  they  drove  up  the  doors  were  flung  open  with  a 
clang,  and  two  dogs,  and  what  seemed  to  Patricia  a  crowd  of 
men  in  scarlet  and  buff,  appeared  in  the  brilliantly-lighted 
hall.  The  small  dog  barked  shrilly,  and  the  servants  all  came 
forward  under  the  •  marshalship  of  a  solemn-looking  man  in 
black  whom  Patricia  took  to  be  a  gentleman,  and  probably 
Mr.  Hamley's  uncle,  or  a  visitor  :  he  was  only  the  butler  ;  and 
then  Mr.  Hamley  got  out  of  the  carriage — he  would  have  called 
it  descended  Irom  the  carriage — and  the  servant  offered  his 
arm  to  Patricia.  The  poor  girl  got  out  rather  more  awkwardly 
than  she  had  got  in,  knocking  her  hat  against  the  roof,  stum- 
bling over  her  dress,  and  taking  the  man's  proffered  elbow 
underhanded,  as  if  it  had  been  a  rope. 

Mr.  Hamley  turned  and  as  a  relief  to  his  feelings  kicked 


68  "  WHAT  won  D  you  DO,  LOVE  ?  •• 

the  big  dog  that  was  standing  quite  still,  leisurely  surveying 
the  new-comer.  If  she  had  blushed  and  looked  ashamed  ho 
would  not  have  minded  so  much ;  but  that  "  confounded  cool- 
ness of  hers,"  as  he  called  her  innocent  unconsciousness,  an- 
noyed him  perhaps  more  than  her  awkwardness.  However, 
there  was  no  help  for  it.  He  only  hoped  the  men  had  not 
noticed  her  ;  but  he  made  sure  they  had  ;  and  for  them  to 
know  that  Mrs.  Hamley's  niece  had  not  been  a  carriage-lady 
all  her  life  was  a  bitter  mortification  to  the  former  shoeless 
little  street-boy  holding  horses  for  coppers,  and  the  present 
master  of  Abbey  Holme. 

Concealing  his  annoyance  in  the  best  way  he  could,  the 
butler  leading  the  way,  Mr.  Hamley  took  Patricia's  hand  upon 
his  arm  and  walked  solemnly  with  her  across  the  hall  and 
through  half  a  dozen  ante-rooms  to  the  small  drawing-room 
where  they  always  sat,  and  where  he  would  present  her  to  her 
aunt. 

The  small  drawing-room  at  Abbey  Holme  was  about  thirty 
feet  in  length,  and  of  proportionate  width  ;  and  to  Patricia, 
accustomed  to  a  sitting-room  just  a  third  that  size,  it  looked 
interminable.  It  was  heavily  furnished,  but  feebly  lighted,  a 
couple  of  silver  reading-lamps,  casting  two  little  islands  of 
light  on  two  little  velvet  tables  drawn  close  to  the  hearth, 
being  the  whole  of  the  illumination.  By  one  table  sat  Mrs. 
Hamley,  by  the  other  Dora  Drummond. 

A  tall,  thin,  fashionably-dressed  woman,  noticeably  upright, 
and  with  a  small  waist  tightly  belted ;  wearing  her  own  hair 
not  dyed,  but  restored — as  she  was  careful  to  tell  her  friends 
— her  scanty  puffs  and  braids,  helped  out  by  art,  profusely 
ornamented  with  white  lace  and  shining  black  flowers,  her 
rustling  black  silk  gown  also  glistening  with  beads  and  bugles, 
and  multitudinous  jet  ornaments  clinking  lightly  as  she  moved 
her  head  or  hands  ;  a  tall  thin  woman,  with  a  look  partly  of 
ill-health  and  partly  of  ill-temper  on  her  pinched  and  sallow 
face  ;  with  cold  light  grey  eyes  and  closely-drawn  pale  and 
narrow  lips — a  woman  fully  twenty  years  the  senior  of.  her 
sleek  and  prosperous  husband — rose  slowly  from  her  seat  as  the 
pair  came  up  to  where  she  sat. 

"  How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Hamley  1 "  she  said  in  a  thin  voice 
to  her  husband,  shaking  hands  with  him  coldly.  The  Hamley 


THE    HOME-COMING.  69 

marriage  was  not  one  of  the  caressing  sort.  "  I  am  glad  to  see 
you  safe.  And  is  this  my  niece,  Patricia  Kemball  ]  How  do 
you  do,  Patricia  ?  How  tall  you  are !  You  are  like  poor 
Reginald,  and  like  my  poor  mamma  too,  I  see." 

"  How  do  you  do,  Aunt  Hamley  1  I  am  very  much  obliged 
to  you  for  your  kindness  in  taking  me  here,"  said  Patricia,  in 
her  loud  clear  voice  ;  a  little  subdued,  perhaps,  because  she 
was  partly  shy  and  partly  moved,  but  louder  and  clearer  and 
fuller  than  the  normal  register  heard  at  Abbey  Holme.  It 
sounded  like  a  silver  trumpet,  full,  rich,  sonorous,  after  Mrs. 
Hamley's  tinkling  wires  ;  but  it  was  louder  than1  Mrs.  Hamley 
liked,  and  sounded  the  note  of  discordance  at  the  outset.  She 
and  Dora  Drummond  looked  at  each  other,  and  each  under- 
stood what  the  other  thought. 

"  How  do  you  do,  Patricia  ?  "  said  Dora  Drummond  in  the 
sweetest  flute-like  notes.  She  had  a  dainty  little  lisp,  especially 
becoming — a  catch  rather  than  a  lisp — and  she  spoke  slowly 
and  softjy. 

Patricia  turned  and  looked  at  her.  She  saw  a  young  woman 
of  about  four  and  twenty,  of  middle  height,  by  so  means  thin, 
but  of  singular  grace  of  line  and  movement ;  she  saw  a  fair 
face  with  a  small  head  round  which  coiled  and  twisted  in- 
numerable braids  of  golden  hair  as  smooth  and  glossy  as  spun 
glass;  blue  eyes  with  light  lashes — eyes  that  did  not  look  straight 
and  steady  like  her  own,  but  that  had  the  most  bewitching  little 
trick  of  shy  observation,  fleeting,  half  ashamed  to  be  caught 
observing,  such  glances  as  Mr.  Hamley  liked,  and  which  he  had 
once  confessed  to  Simpson  the  lawyer,  when  he  was  making  his 
will,  "  fetched  him,  as  nothing  of  the  kind  had  ever  done  in  his 
life  before,"  but  which  others  had  been  heard  to  say  they 
wished  were  franker  and  not  so  sly ;  a  small,  moist,  rosy 
mouth  ;  a  small,  round,  dimpled  chin  ;  a  waist  that  you  could 
span — only  eighteen  inches  ;  and  dimpled  tiny  hands,  pink  and 
unpractical.  This  dainty  little  person  was  dressed  in  a  pretty 
costume  of  peach-blossom  set  about  with  black  lace  and  ribbon 
to  mark  her  share  in  the  family  mourning — a  costume  all  frills 
and  lace  and  coquettish  arrangements  of  bows  and  ends,  as 
beseemed  her  youth  and  beauty,  and  making  her  graceful  figure 
look  more  graceful  still  by  contrast  with  the  billowy  puffinga 
which  concealed  some  lines  to  betray  others  to  greater  advan- 


70  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

tage.  Altogether  she  was  one  of  the  loveliest  creatures  Patricia 
had  ever  seen  ;  and  yet  the  girl's  first  movement  towards  this 
fairy  was  one  of  repulsion.  Her  second,  when  Dora  looked  at 
her  so  kindly,  spoke  to  her  so  softly,  and  pressed  her  hands 
with  such  tender  warmth,  was  one  of  gratitude;  and  with 
gratitude  and  admiration  together  the  rest  was  not  difficult. 

Especially  graceful  and  .  well-mannered,  as  was  also  Aunt 
Hamley  in  her  own  severe  way,  both  women  struck  the  home- 
bred girl  as  of  a  different  type  and  mould  from  ordinary 
humanity.  Not  even  Miss  Pritchard-had  ever  invented  lessons 
of  deportment  that  came  near  to  the  lovely  grace  of  Dora 
Drummond,  the  ladylike  self-possession  of  Aunt  Hamley. 

"  Now  I  know,  why  dear  uncle  wanted  me  to  have  a  lady 
companion,"  she  thought,  and  looked  at  Dora  with  a  beaming 
face  that  seemed  to  that  young  person  "infinitely  funny." 

She  was  accustomed  to  be  admired,  but  not  by  girls  ;  and  the 
naivet6  of  Patricia's  admiration  amused  her.  But  she  accepted 
it  with  a  sweet  and  friendly  smile,  mentally  determining  to  turn 
it  to  good  account,  if  she  should  ever  want  a  help  as  olind  as 
Patricia's  would  be. 

"  She  will  not  be  my  rival,  and  I  will  make  her  my  slave," 
Dora  thought,  as  she  looked  up  with  the  sweetest  friendliness 
into  the  clear  eyes  gazing  down  so  honestly  into  hers  ;  and, 
pressing  the  large  hand  that  held  her  taper  fingers  quite  en- 
closed, suggested  that  Patricia  must  be  cold,  and  apologized  for 
standing  between  her  and  the  fire.  Which  she  was  not  doing  ; 
but  it  sounded  hospitable  to  say  so. 

On  which  Mrs.  Hamley  rang  the  bell  for  her  maid,  and 
Patricia,  under  her  guidance,  was  led  through  hall  and  passage 
and  corridor,  till  the  way  seemed  as  if  it  wonld  never  end.  be- 
fore she  was  finally  ushered  into  the  room  assigned  her  ;  where 
the  first  thing  she  did  was  to  draw  back  the  curtains  from  the 
window,  open  the  window-shutters,  then  the  window,  point 
with  a  look  of  dismay  to  the  huge  fire  blazing  in  the  grate,  and 
say  piteously,  "Oh,  please  take  that  away ;  I  never  have  a  fire 
in  my  bedroom  !  "  and  altogether  show  the  savage  simplicity  of 
her  up-bringing  to  her  aunt's  prim  and  genteel  maid  as  clearly 
as  if  she  had  given  her  a  sketch  of  her  whole  life,  and  proved 
mathematically  that  Uncle  Robert  had  been  "  no  gentleman," 
and  that  she  herself  was  not  a  whit  more  of  a  lady. 


THE    HOME-COMING.  71 

And  while  she  was  upstairs  scandalising  Bignold  by  her  un- 
ladylike simplicity  of  personal  habits  in  the  first  place,  and  by 
her  unfashionably  cut  garments  in  the  second,  the  three  Asses- 
sors down-stairs  were  passing  judgment  on  her  from  first  im- 
pressions. 

"  She  has  a  nice  face,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley ;  "  but  she  is  dread- 
fully uncouth." 

"  Quite  in  the  rough,  Lady,  as  I  told  you,"  said  Mr.  Hamley, 
shifting  his  feet  noisily.  • 

"  She  will  look  better  when  she  is  better  dressed,"  suggested 
Dora  amiably.  "  She  is  untidy  now,  and  looks  tired  and 
tumbled.  To-morrow  perhaps  she  will  be  better." 

"  There  you  are  out,  Dora,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  ;  "  she'll  be  no 
better  to  your  liking  to-morrow  than  she  is  to-day.  I  tell  you 
what  it  is,  Lady,"  turning  to  his  wife,  "  you've  got  your  hands 
full  with  that  young  woman,  and  your  work's  cut  out  for  you 
and  no  mistake  !  "  . 

"  I  shall  be  able  to  make  her  all  I  could  wish.  She  is  my 
own  niece,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  colniy ;  and  Mr.  Hamley  was  too 
well  drilled  not  to  be  able  to  note  signs  with  accuracy. 

"  No  doubt  no  doubt  1 "  he  said,  spreading  out  his  large  hands 
to  the  fire.  "At  all  events" — with  his  grand  manner;  the 
manner  he  put  on  when  he  wanted  to  impress  women  with  the 
consciousness  of  his  bigness  and  manliness  and  strength  and 
magnanimity — "at  all  events  this  is  her  home,  poor  young 
lady,  and  we  must  do  the  best  we  can  for  her.  What  we've 
done  for  Dora  we'll  do  for  her ;  and  I'll  never  grudge  the  out- 
lay. Whether  she'll  turn  out  as  good  a  job  as  Dora  is  another 
matter ; "  here  he  smiled  on  his  fair  cousin  ;  "  but  we'll  try, 
Lady,  we'll  try.  Faint  heart  never  won  fair  lady,  and  we  can't 
top  the  hills  if  we  sit  down  at  the  foot." 

"You  speak  as  if  she  was  a  savage,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley 
tartly. 

"  You  might  have  made  a  worse  guess,  Lady  1 "  replied  the 
brewer  composedly. 


73  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER  VIIL 

FENCED   IN. 

ILLTOWN  was  eminently  a  residential  place.  Visitors 
were  discouraged,  and  the  enterprising  or  impecunious 
householders  who  ventured  to  exhibit  "  Apartments  " 
in  their  windows  were  not  well  regarded  by  the  gentry,  who 
«eeme<i  to  regard  such  an  announcement  as  a  personal  imperti- 
nence, as  well  as  a  liberty,  for  which  the  householders  deserved 
reproof.  To  let  lodgings  to  strangers  was  held  to  be  a  base  sac- 
rifice of  Milltown  respectability  to  filthy  lucre  ;  and  gentlefolks 
with  a  good  balance  at  their  bankers  are  generally  strict  in  their 
estimate  of  the  mill  wherein  their  poorer  brethren  grind  their 
corn. 

Being  thus  residential  nothing  was  done  to  attract  the  out- 
lying public.  There  was  no  parade,  no  evening  band,  no  pier 
for  the  display  of  pretty  boots  and  neat  ankles  on  windy  days, 
no  Rooms,  and  next  to  no  baths.  The  inhabitants  thought  it 
indelicate  to  bathe  ;  so  there  were  only  two  machines  :  one  for 
the  ladies,  painted  blue  and  white,  and  one'  for  the  gentlemen, 
painted  green  and  black  ;  and  even  these  the  proprietor  said  he 
was  working  at  a  sacrifice  and  on  the  ground  of  public  spirit. 

Though  a  seaside  place,  the  sea  was  only  a  passive  adjunct 
not  an  active  part  of  Milltown  existence,  A  land-locked  placid 
bay,  shallow  and  barren,  it  was  artistically  valuable  on  account 
of  its  colour,  and  the  changing  lights  lying  on  its  cliffs ;  but 
nearly  worthless  for  fishing  and  very  little  used  for  boating. 
Only  one  house  in  the  place  had  a  yacht  in  the  basin  within 
the  breakwater.  This  was  the  Water  Lily,  a  pretty  little  toy 
belonging  to  the  Lowes  ;  young  Sydney  Lowe,  with  his  father 
the  Colonel,  generally  contriving  to  have  all  they  wished  to 
have,  though  by  no  means  wealthy  people  ;  indeed,  being  the 
most  out  at  elbows  of  all  the  Milltown  gentry.'  But  the  more 
nearly  insolvent  a  certain  kind  of  man  is  the  more  he  contrives 
to  ipend  on  hia  pleasures.  Colonel  Lowe,  of  Cragfoot,  was  this 


FENCED  IN.  73 

kind  of  man,  and  his  son  Sydney  was  like  him.  Being  thickly 
inhabited  by  the  gentry  every  rood  of  land  had  its  exclusive 
owner  and  its  artificial  as  well  as  natural  value.  The  very  cliffs 
were  fenced  off  against  trespassers ;  perpetual  attempts  were 
made  to  stop  old-established  rights  of  way,  which  sometimes 
succeeded,  if  at  others  they  failed  when  some  man  of  more 
public  spirit  than  his  neighbours  was  personally  inconvenienced  ; 
and  the  open  paths  across  the  fields,  which  were  inalienable, 
were  grudgingly  marked  off  by  lines  of  thorns,  with  fierce  warn- 
ings of  prosecution  should  the  narrow  strip  be  departed  from  ; 
while  all  the  gates  were  padlocked  and  the  stiles  made  unneces 
sarily  high  and  difficult.  It  was  a  jealous,  "  this  is  mine,  and 
you  have  no  right  here,"  kind  of  system  that  was  not  good  for 
the  higher  feeling  of  the  people. 

The  country  was  noted  for  its  garden-}ike  neatness.  Every 
hedge  and  bank  for  miles  round  was  trimmed  and  combed  like 
a  croquet  lawn.  No  wild  flowers  were  allowed  on  the  Mill- 
town  public  waysides  ;  no  trailing  growths,  rich  and  luxuriant, 
to  enchant  an  artist  and  distress  the  highway  board  and  private 
gardeners,  twined  and  hung  about  the  well-clipped  hedges  of 
thorn  and  privet.  If  you  wanted  to  study  botany  you  must  go 
some  five  miles  or  so  inland,  where  a  certain  stretch  of  unre- 
claimed land  gave  the  growths  that  flourish  in  peat  and  neg- 
lect, as  welias  affording  squatting  ground  to  a  few  half-starved 
miserable  sinners  whom  the  Milltovvn  people  regarded  with  a 
mixture  of  fear  and  contempt,  as  if  they  were  of  another  order 
of  beings  altogether  from  themselves.  The  Milltown  people 
paid  no  reverence  to  nature  in  the  rough,  and  at  the  best  held 
her  as  only  brute  material,  without  value  till  man  had  come 
with  his  tools  to  pare  her  luxuriance  and  bring  her  into  subjec- 
tion: 

If  the  face  of  the  country  was  fenced  and  trimmed  and  curled, 
till  not  a  vestige  of  wild  beauty  or  natural  grace  was  left  in 
it,  the  society  of  Milltown  was  in  harmony  therewith.  It  would 
have  been  hard  to  find  a  more  rigidly  respectable  or  more  con- 
ventionalised set  of  people  anywhere,  than  were  those  who 
ordered  their  lives  in  this  pretty  hypasthral  prison  by  the  "  safe," 
if  untrue,  gospel  of  repression  and  condemnation.  They  were 
all  retired  admirals  and  colonels  and  landed  gentry,  who  lived 
there ;  all  emphatically  gentlemen,  with  the  Earl  of  Dovedale  at 


74  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  IX),  LOVE?" 

the  Quest  as  their  patron  social  saint,  when  he  came  down. 
And  up  to  quite  late  years  not  even  a  millionaire,  who  had 
made  his  millions  in  trade,  would  have  heen  admitted  among 
them.  It  was  a  place  where  the  dominant  social  sentiment-was 
caste.  The  gentlefolks  were  one  thing  and  the  commonalty 
was  another ;  the  one  represented  the  sheep  and  the  elect,  and 
the  other  the  goats  and  the  discarded.  The  gentry  classed 
these  last  all  together  in  a  lump  ;  and  the  idea  that  they  in  their 
turn  could  he  split  into  minor  subdivisions,  wherein  the  baker 
and  the  boatman,  the  fanner  and  his  hind,  held  different  de- 
grees, seemed  to  them  as  ridiculous  as  the  wars  of  pigmies  or 
the  caste  distinctions  of  savages.  But  the  commonalty  followed 
their  leaders,  and  the  example  of  class  exclusiveness  set  in  the 
higher  circles  was  faithfully  copied  through  the  lower. 

Milltown  was  respectable ;  as  a  rule  intensely  so.  No  one 
got  into  debt  publicly,  or  did  wrong  openly ;  and  whatever 
sins  might  be  committed  were  all  out  of  sight  and  covered  down. 
The  majority,  too,  went  the  right  way  in  politics.  No  confessed 
Republican  had  ever  troubled  the  clear  stream  of  Milltown  Con- 
servatism. The  worst  of  the  pestilent  fellows  who  canvassed 
for  the  wrong  side,  voted  blue  instead  of  yellow  at  the  elections, 
and  stood  up  against  the  rector  at  board  meetings  and  vestries, 
were  nothing  worse  than  mild  Whigs  who  would  have  been 
shocked  to  have  heard  themselves  classed  with  Odger  and 
Bradlaugh,  or  as  sympathising  with  even  the  "  real  gentlemen  " 
who  had  associated  their  names  with  advanced  oninions.  But 
even  mild  Whiggism  was  abhorrent  to  Milltown  respectability, 
and  voted  disreputable  and  low.  A  confessed  Republican  or 
Freethinker  would  have  been  considered  capable  of  picking 
pockets  or  cutting  throats,  had  he  held  up  his  head  and  testi- 
fied in  the  market-place  ;  and  "  not  regular  in  his  attendance  at 
church,"  or  "  not  sound,"  was  the  worst  condemnation  that 
could  be  given  in  a  society  where  "  chapel  people  "  was  used  as 
a  term  of  reproach,  and  where  a  gentleman  would  as  soon  have 
put  on  an  apron  and  sold  figs  as  have  gone  inside  the  Wesleyan 
or  the  Baptist  place  of  worship. 

The  parish  church  where  Mr.  Borrodaile,  the  rector,  preached 
his  weekly  orthodox  sermon  on  what  may  be  called  dogmas  of 
a  second  intention,  not  wholly  moral  nor  yet  wholly  theological, 
was  a  fine  old  building  of  the  Early  English  style.  The  services 


FENCED  IN.  75 

were  conducted  in  what  they  called  "  a  proper  and  decent 
manner."  There  was  no  ecclesiastical  vagueness  at  Milltown  ; 
no  tampering  with  the  unclean  thing  in  any  way.  Extreme 
opinions  were  tabooed  to  which  side  soever  they  leaned,  and 
enthusiasm  was  regarded  as  both  vulgar  and  silly.  Ritualism, 
Evangelicism.  or  nationalism,  an  attempt  to  attain  superior 
spiritual  nobleness,  or  to  carry  out  into  actioh  the  Christian 
precepts  in  their  simplicity,  or  to  make  the  services  of  the 
church  more  gorgeous — all  these  things  would  have  been  equally 
despised  had  they  been  presented.  Milltown  prided  itself  on 
being  English — English  to  the  backbone  ;  and  as  England  was 
to  its  mind  the  Delos  of  the  religious  as  well  .as  of  the  social  and 
political  world,  and  as  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  were^iourish- 
ment  enough  for  the  most  hungry  soul,  any  line  of  thought 
which  would  have  led  it  a  hair's  breadth  away  from  ecclesias- 
tical Christianity  as  decided  by  Act  of  Parliament  would  have 
been  considered  a  heresy  a'nd  a  treason. 

The  inhabitants  did  their  duty  and  the  rector  did  his.  They 
went  to  church;  heard  what  he  had  to  say  \\i h  more  or  less 
attention  and  more  or  4ess  personal  profit;  then  went  home  to 
what  amount  of  earthly  comfort  their  rents  or  wages  provided, 
and  dismissed  the  subject  of  religion  till  the  next  Sunday,  when 
they  took  it  up  again  with  their  best  clothes  and  a  superior 
dinner.  He  prepared  his  smnon,  wherein  he  either  exhorted 
the  poor  to  contentment  and  honest  industry,  or  lectured  his 
congregation  on  the  sins  and  temptations  to  which  those  of  low 
estate  are  specially  prone  (he  dropped  the  subject  of  the  sins  of 
those  in  high  places  ) ;  of  else  he  said  a  few  words  ajiout  elemen- 
tary dogmas,  which  the  more  vigorous  Wesleyan  Minister 
serving  the  little  chapel  by  the  water-side  called  milk  for  babes; 
then  he  too  went  home  to  his  well  spread  table,  where  he  drank 
his  fine  old  crusted  port  and  eat  his  Dartmoor  mutton  with  a 
good  appetite  and  a  tranquil  soul,  in  nowise  troubled  with  dis- 
turbing applications  or  vitalising  convictions.  For  the  rest,  he 
was  fairly  active  in  his  degree:  he  presided  over  the  schools, 
where  he  allowed  no  reading-book  but  the  Bible ;  was  the  head 
of  the  Board  of  Guardians  and  not  guilty  of  the  sin  of  charity 
in  excess  ;  sat  as  a  magistrate  every  Wednesday,  like  any  other 
gentleman,  and  mingled  the  precepts  of  the  pulpit  and  the 
judgment  of  the  bench  with  admirable  dialectical  skill;  gave 


76  "WHAT  WOULD  FOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

hospitable  dinners  and  accepted  invitations  to  the  like  ;  when 
a  few  uneasy  spirits  demanded  and  organised  a  workman's 
reading-room  or  Mechanics'  Institute,  as  it  WMS  called,  he  took 
care  to  lead  the  movement  he  first  tried  to  suppress,  and  to 
have  his  hand  on  the  rules  so  as  to  render  the  institution 
"  harmless  ;"  an,d  on  the  whole  got  through  life  in  a  calm  easy 
kind  of  way,  earning  his  twelve  hundred  a  year  without  much 
trouble  ;  and  if  but  an  indifferent  shepherd  for  the  lost  lambs, 
making  a  tolerably  inoffensive  one  to  those  content  to  go  quietly 
in  the  beaten  track,  undisturbed  by  doubt,  not  troubled  with 
over  zeal,  and  unstained  by  public  sin. 

Furthermore,  there  was  the  usual  sprinkling  of  widows  with 
marriageable  daughters ;  of  old  bachelors  who  could  and  yet 
would  not;  and  of  spinsters  from  whom  hope,  like  chance,  had 
long  since  fled.  Of  these  last  were  the  two  kinds  familiar  to 
all  who  understand  provincial  life  in  England  :  the  one  strict 
and  severe,  who  ignored  all  individual  rights  as  well  as  the 
rights  of  human  nature  in  favour  of  the  conventional  law,  to 
whom  most  things  were  shocking,  and  the  worst  interpretations 
came  easy  ;  and  the  other  who  could  read  French,  had  been  to 
London,  had  a  slight  tendency  to  plain  speaking,  tolerated 
cigars  and  did  not  encourage  scandal,  and  was  considered  lax 
by  mothers  and  strong-minded  by  men.  Furthermore  still, 
and  different  from  the  rest  of  the  Milltowu  world,  were  Dr. 
Fletcher  and  his  sister  Catherine ;  of  whom  more  when  their 
turn  comes. 

None  of  the  questions  agitating  the  jrorld  outside  this  little 
Sleepy  Hollow  of  Philistinism,  found  a  sympathetic  echo  here. 
Woman's  rights  were  considered  immoral,  unrighteous  and  inde- 
licate; strikes,  and  the  theory  of  the  rights  of  labour,  were 
criminal  and  treasonable;  the  education  of  the  poor  was  the 
knell  of  England's  prosperity  ;  and  the  democratic  spirit  abroad 
boded  the  downfall  of  the  empire  and  the  ruin  of  society.  But 
where  all  else  was  evil,  one  place  at  least  remained  pure.  Mill- 
town  held  itself  clear  of  the  prevailing  sins,  and  constituted 
itself  the  Zoar  of  English  social  order  and  political  righteous-" 
ness. 

The  shopkeepers  were  the  fitting  pendants  to  the  gentry. 
They  were  of  noticeably  bland  and  respectful  manners;  did  not 
trouble  themselves  with  public  questions,  which  they  left  to , 


FENCED  IN.  77 

those  who  understood  them ;  charged  high,  and  preferred  yearly 
bills  to  ready  money.  But  they  did  not,  as  the  fishermen  and 
the  farmers,  think  to  please  the  rector  by  asking  for  weather 
prayers  according  to  their  own  immediate  wants,  nor  speak 
of  rain  and  drought  as  the  consequences  of  topographical  ini- 
quities. To  sum  up  in  a  word  ;  all  through,  the  gentlefolks 
were  the  masters  of  the  situation,  and  the  "  common  people  "  of 
all  degrees  were  made  to  understand  that  they  existed  prima- 
rily for  the  comfort  of  those  gentlefolks,  and  only  secondarily 
for  their  own. 

It  was  a  bold  thing  for  Mr.  Hamley  to  decide  on  forcing  his 
way  into  such  a  custe  society  as  this  of  Milltown.     But  Mr. 
Hamley 's  ideal  masculine  virtue  was  will,  and  he  lived  up  to 
his  pattern.     He  put  small  faith  in  chance  and  less  in  Provi- 
dence, and  believed  in  no  towers  of  strength  of  which  a  man 
.does  not  make  the  bricks  by  his  own  exertions.     He  laughed 
'at  the  idea  of  luck,  and  preached  frequent  after-dinner  sehnons 
"on  the  text  that  "  conduct  is  fate."     Unconsciously  paraphras- 
'  ing  the  axiom  which  tells  each  French  soldier  he  carries  a  mar- 
shal s  baton  in  his  knapsack,  if  he  has  but  the  wit  to  find  it,  he 
vigorously  maintained,  in  positive  accents  if  his  grammar  was 
shaky,  that  success  is  within  the  reach  of  all  men,  independent 
even  of  the  first  start,  and  that  it  is  merely  a  question  of  energy 
and  will  whether  a  man  wears  broadcloth  or  fustian,  and  lives 
in  a  palace  or  dies  in  a  hovel. 

"Look  at  me,"  he  used  to  say,  tapping  his  spread  fingers  on 
his  ample  chest ,while  his  thumbs  were  hooked  into  his  waist- 
coat arniholes.  "  What  qpade  me  1  Energy  and  will.  What 
has  ruined  scores  of  other  men  ?  Want  of  energy  and  will. 
Set  your  teeth,  sit  square,  and  go  at  it  as  if  the  devil  was  be- 
hind you.  That  is  what  I  have  done,  gentlemen,  and  where 
am  I  ?  At  Abbey  Holme,  from  office-boy  at  Ledbury's  on  six: 
pence  a  day  ^id  find  yourself.  And  those  who  have  not  sat 
square  and  gone^at  it,  but  smouched  and  slouched  and  wanted 
this  help  and-^hat  lift — I'd  lift  them,  the  lazy  dogs  ! — are  just 
where  they  were  when  they  commenced." 

These  sermons,  practically  self-laudations,  were  apt  to  run 
into  space  in  rather  a  formidable  way  ;  and  his  hearers  often 
wished  he  was  back  at  Ledbury's,  that  they  might  have  the 
privilege  of  telling  him  to  "  shift-up  "  or  of  "  cuffing  his  head  " 


78  "WHAT  WOULD  vor  tx>,  LOVE?" 

if  he  went  on.  But  a  prosperous  man  never  fails  to  find  prac- 
tical patience  where  he  has  won  acceptance  ;  and  the  men  who 
stifled  the  most  yawns  were  sure  to  cry  "  Hear,  hear  !  "  the 
oftenest,  and  to  shake  bands  with  him  with  most  ostentatious 
friendliness  when  he  had  finished.  After  all,  Milltown  was  only 
the  world  in  little,  and  its  clean-handed  Pharisaism  was  never 
BO  clean  as  to  damage  its  own  interests. 

Mr.  Harnley,  setting  himself  to  conquer  this  caste-berklden 
society,  had  succeeded.  Step  by  step  he  had  climbed  the  lad- 
der dexterously  and  boldly — now  from  an  orifice- boy  to  a  clerk, 
now  from  a  clerk  to  a  junior  partner,  then  to  be  that  senior 
partner  himself,  and  finally  to  be  sole  possessor  of  the  brewery 
which  had  made  the  fortunes  of  all  its  sole  possessors  time  out 
of  mind.  And  when  he  was  firmly  established  there  he  made 
an  offer  of  marriage  to  Miss  Kemball,  the  very  poor  and  very 
genteel  daughter  of  Admiral  Sir  Robert  Kemball,  K.C.B., 
whose  relations  with  the  upper  classes  would  put  the  finishing 
touch  to  his  success.  And  Miss  Kemball,  being  then  past  fifty 
and  wholly  dependent  on  her  brothers,  who  were  very  nearly 
as  poor  as  herself,  while  Jabez  Hamley  was  a  showy  young 
man  worth  a  great  many  thousands,  swallowed  her  disgust  for 
his  low  birth,  for  his  inherent  vulgarity,  for  his  rodent  teeth, 
his  bushy  black  whiskers  and  his  indefinite  syntax,  and  married 
him  ;  with  misgivings  ;  but  with  a  determination  never  to  let 
the  world  see  that  she  repented  her  decision.  He,  on  his  part, 
determined  the  same.  Thus  the  marriage  had  kept  together 
with  a  wonderful  show  of  harmony,  and  had  accomplished  all 
on  either  side  for  which  both  had  so!4  themselves.  Tims  again, 
the  result  sanctifying  the  event,  it  had  become  respectable  in 
the  eyes  of  the  Milltownians ;  and  as  Mrs.  Hamley  was  cer- 
tainly a  lady,  and  Mr.  Hamley  a  man  of  irreproachable  charac- 
ter— though  he  had  sprung  from  nothing — a  man,  too,  of  the 
right  political  colour,  and  rich,  why,  society  relaxed  its  exclu- 
sive rule  in  his  favour ;  which  however  was  not  to  be  taken  as 
a  precedent  Gradually  house  after  house  opened  to  him  ;  and 
the  wealthy  brewer  sat  as  an  equal  at  the  table  of  the  men  who 
had  given  him  pence  in  bygone  days  and  had  sent  him  into  the 
yard  to  get  a  hunch  of  bread  from  the  cook. 

The  only  house  to  which  he  had  not  yet  been  invited  was 
the  Quest ;  but  from  information  received  lie  had  reason  to  be- 


lieve  that  he  would  not  be  passed  over  this  season,  and  that 
his  humble  suit  ami  service  of  many  years  would  at  last  meet 
with  its  reward.  For  Mr.  Hamley  had  always  been  a  far-see- 
ing kind  of  man.  He  had  early  taken  the  measure  of  the 
heaven  into  which  he  desired  to  be  admitted,  and  had  ordered 
himself  and  his  ways  accordingly.  Having  set  out  in  life  de- 
termined to  conquer  society,  he  had  been  scrupulously  careful 
never  to  offend  it.  No  one  could  recall  an  offensive  word  from 
him  against  his  social  superiors  or  the  institutions  of  his  coun- 
try. He  had  always  been  a  good  Conservative  and  a  staunch 
upholder  of  the  aristocracy.  He  professed  a  romantic  attach 
ment  for  the  Queen  and  Royal-Family,  and  whenever  he  could 
bring  in  "  the  throne  and  altar"  with  effect,  he  did.  To  have 
done  otherwise  would  have  been  suicidal,  a  fouling  of  his  own 
future  nest  which,  one  day,  who  knows  ?  might  also  harbour 
eagles. 

But  no  one  had  yet  seen  Mr.  Hamley  in  power,  or  with  the 
neck  of  one  of  those  gentlemen  who  had  flung  him  coppers  in 
times  past,  ignored  him  in  his  earlier  efforts,  and  only  recognised 
him  now  when  he  had  bought  them  by  his  possessorship  of 
Abbeyjiloline,  under  his  heel.  When  that  day  came,  the  man 
whose  neck  was  uftffer  his  heel  might  be  pitied. 

He  was  also  strong  on  the  subject  of  sex  ;  holding  the  doc- 
trine of  tne  rougher  rights  of  men,  and  the  gentler  privileges 
of  ladies  ;  ajjjd,, while  denying  anything  like  elemental  equality, 
conceding,  asMias  been  said,  all  kinds  of  social  superiority. 
His  fa^Mfite  simile,  wnich  was  evidently  not  original,  was  that 
men  were  as  the  oak,  born  to  brave  the  battle  and  the  breeze  ; 
woman,  the  clinging  ivy.  This  doctrine  applied  only  to  ladies  ; 
in  the  rougl,  women  of  the  people,  servants,  pea- 
sants, and  the  like,  he  \tas  simply  what  only  one  word  can  ex- 
press— brutal. 

An  old  servant  who  had  lived  with  him  in  his  bachelor  days, 
once  heard  him  bring  out  this  favourite  flourish  of  his  about 
the  oak  and  the  ivy. 

"  Ah,  oak  and  ivy  's  all  very  well  when  you've  got  friends  at 
your  back  to  look  after  you,"  she  said,  setting  her  lips  tight, 
"  but  what  I  say  is,  it's  the  toad  and  the  harrow  when. you 
haven't ;  and  it  ain't  pleasant  for  the  toad. 

Mrs.  Hamley  approved  her  husband's  doctrines,  if  sometimes 


t>  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

his  manner  of  setting  them  forth  made  her  feel  that  to  be  even 
mistress  of  Abbey  Holme  had  its  drawbacks.  For  her  own 
part  she  advocated  domestic  discipline,  as  well  as  upheld  theo- 
retical feminine  submission.  Her  central  creed  was  the  plasti- 
city of  human  nature  when  taken  young  and  firmly  handled ; 
and  absolute  obedience  to  social  ordinances  stood  in  her  mind 
next  in  importance  to  obedience  to  the  Ten  Commandments. 
She  had  no  tolerance  for  the  wild  humours,  the  erratic  notions, 
the  wayward  fancies  of  youth.  She  liked  all  things  to  be  in 
order ;  and  minds  and  hearts  with  the  rest.  There  was  one 
settled  and  unalterable  way  of  right,  to  her  thinking,  and  every 
divergence  therefrom  was  distinctly  wrong.  The  doctrine  of 
venial  faults  revolted  her  ;  and  she  refused  to  admit  the  plea 
of  extenuating  circumstances,  whatever  the  provocation.  She 
was  one  of  those  women  who  can  look  neither  before  nor  after, 
and  for  whom  their  own  country,  day,  style  of  living,  and 
manner  of  thought,  their  own  views,  ways,  habits,  friends,  and 
associations  are  all  focussed  exactly  right,  and  are  impossible 
to  be  bettered.  She  had  an  odd  irrational  kind  of  opposition 
to  people  and  things  that  were  different  from  herself ;  as  if  she 
had  been  born  absolute  in  taste  and  judgment,  and  what  she 
did  not  like  was  therefore  deserving  of  condemnation.  Thus, 
she  could  nor  tolerate  foreigners  nor  dissenters  nor  free-think- 
ers in  any  sense ;  and  she  disliked  even  friends  and  backers 
who  went  a  hair's  breadth  beyond  herself.  If  thev,  did,  steeped 
in  opposition  as  she  was,  she  used  to  turn  round  and  demolish 
her  former  theory,  leaving  them  dismayed  and  discomfited. 
She  wanted  only  the  exact  echo  of  her  opinions,  the  most  nicely 
graduated  reproduction ;  and  those  who  gave  more  gave  too 
much.  She  had  a  good  intellect  of  its  kind ;  but  she  was  too 
positive  in  her  assertions,  and  too  inaccurate  in  her  facts,  to  be 
a  pleasant  conversationalist.  She  was  unable  to  reason  to  a 
point,  and  always  got  angry  over  an  argument.  Her  religious 
views  were  sharply  defined  and  entirely  unelastic,  and  she  was 
equally  hostile  to  doubt  as  to  enthusiasm.  No  inconvenient 
spiritualism  for  her;  still  less  the  anguish  of  struggling  souls 
seeking  fur  a  better  way  and  a  truer  light.  The  world  has  all 
it  wants,  she  used  to  say ;  and  modern  English  society  is  the 
final  outcome  of  the  Best. 
She  was  by  temperament  grave,  by  temper  fretful ;  seldom 


FENCED  IN.  81 

laughed,  often  chided  ;  she  could  do  generous  things  on  a  large 
scale,  but  she  was  mean  in  small  matters,  and  though  not  un- 
kind, must  be  supreme.  For  though  she  talked  of  feminine 
submission  as  much  as  Mr.  Hamley  talked  of  masculine  au- 
thority, and  inculcated  it  on  others,  somehow  she  seemed  to 
exempt  herself  from  the  rank  of  womanly  slaves,  and  was  al- 
ways tho  mistress,  absolute  and  autocratic. 

This  was  quite  well  understood  at  Abbey  Holme  ;  and  Mr. 
Hamley,  though  he  might  stick  his  thumbs  into  his  armholes 
and  play  tunes  on  his  chest,  never  in  her  presence  commanded 
man  nor  maid,  uttered  a  decided  opinion  of  his  own,  nor  dif- 
fered from  hers,  nor  indeed  held  his  own  flag  aloft  in  any  way. 
She  was  always  referred  to  humbly  as  "  Lady,"  and  he  fol- 
lowed in  her  wake  deferentially. 

In  some  things  indeed  she  honestly  possessed  him.  She  had 
had  a  better  education  than  he,  and  made  no  difficulties  on  the 
score  of  conjugal  delicacy  in  showing  him  where  he  tripped 
and  how  he  had  exposed  his  ignorance.  And  when  a  woman' 
has  sufficient  strength  of  mind  to  do  this  very  often,  and  al- 
ways quietly,  she  is  sure  to  end  by  subjugating  her  husband, 
whatever  his  number  of  inches ;  and,  perhaps,  the  bigger  the 
man  the  more  thorough  his  subjugation.  Then  she  was  invari- 
ably self-possessed,  and  always  in  the  attitude  of  a  superior 
being.  She  allowed  no  enthusiasm,  no  loud  laughter,  no  noise, 
no  fun,  no  rudeness  in  her  presence.  Life  with  her  must  be 
well-oiled  in  all  its  hinges,  and  regulated  by  the  strictest  rules 
of  common-sense.  She  went  regularly  to  church  twice  on  Sun 
days ;  not  because  she  felt  the  need  or  the  comfort  of  going  to 
church,  but  because  it  was  the  right  thing  to  do  as  an  example 
to  the  common  people,  and  what  was  owing  to  the  rector  as  a 
gentleman  whose  function  it  was  to  read  the  service  and  preach 
for  five-and-twenty  minutes  after.  And  she  had  morning  and 
evening  prayers  at  home  ;  the  latter  punctually  at  ten ;  because 
it  was  respectable  and  might  do  the  servants  good,  and  cer- 
tainly enabled  her  to  see  that  they  were  all  safe  under  the  roof 
and  sober.  But  when  she  said  in  those  prayers,  which  she 
herself  read,  that  she  was  a  worm  and  a  miserable  sinner,  she 
said  the  words  with  no  more  inward  conviction  than  if  she  had 
confessed  she  was  an  elephant  or  a  giraffe.  They  were  words  with 
her,  no  more  ;  and  she  did  not  feel  a  wish  to  make  them  more, 
F 


62  «  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

Between  these  two,  Dora  Drummond,  Mr.  Hamley's  young 
cousin,  had  had  but  a  compressed  kind  of  existence  during  the 
ten-years  of  her  adoption.  Masculine  supremacy  on  the  one 
hand,  and  feminine  discipline  on  the  other,  had  taken  all  the 
courage  out  of  a  nature  never  brave  nor  strong,  and  more 
prone  to  yield  than  to  withstand.  Her  sole  object  was  to 
avoid  contention  and  secure  peace  ;  and  as  she  found  sub- 
mission easier  than  fighting  for  freedom,  she  slipped  under 
the  yoke  with  perfect  grace  and  obedience,  and  gave  no  more 
trouble  to  the  authorities  at  Abbey  Holme  than  Patricia  had 
given  at  Barsands.  But  the  difference  of  method  by  which 
these  two  girls  had  been  taught  obedience  was  not  inconsider- 
able. Neither  were  the  results. 

This  then  was  the  kind  of  place  into  which  Patricia  came 
from  the  freedom,  the  happiness,  the  practical  democracy  of 
Barsands.  Not  a  line  of  the  old  ruling  remained  to  her.  Even 
the  se£,  her  old  friend  and  playmate,  was  not  the  sea  of  her 
love.  Tamed  down  to  a  mere  mill-pond,  it  seemed  to  have  lost 
all  the  life  and  meaning  it  had  when  it  came  lashing  round  the 
cliffs  and  foaming  over  the  Gridiron  out  on  that  wild  Cornish 
coast.  And  even  such  as  it  was  ahe  could  not  see  it.  Her  win- 
dows at  Abbey  Holme  looked  only  on  a  steep  bank  of  trimmed 
and  patterned  flower-beds  surmounted  by  the  wall  which  hid 
the  offices.  Now,  in  the  late  autumn  time,  when  there  were  no 
flowers  to  fill  them,  the  beds  were  ribboned  with  coloured 
stones ;  which  Patricia  admired  about  as  much  as  she  admired 
earrings,  rouge,  or  face -powder. 

If  the  place  was  inharmonious,  the  life  at  Abbey  Holme  was 
even  more  so.  Into  that  sternly -fashioned  method  of  existence, 
so  still  and  so  subdued,  her  breezy  vigour  came  with  a  kind  of 
tempestuous  force  that  frightened  Dora,  horrified  Aunt  Ham- 
ley,  and  disgusted  Aunt  Hamley's  husband.  Voice,  step,  man- 
ner, gesture,  everything  carried  with  it  the  impression  of  a 
whirlwind  to  these  quiet,  well-regulated  people ;  and  Mrs. 
Hamley  often  said,  with  her  lips  drawn  close,  that  she  looked 
after  her  when  she  left  the  room,  expecting  to  see  her  leave 
sticks  and  straws  behind  her.  She  was  so  noisy !  so  unsubdued  ! 
lamented  the  poor  old  lady  who  would  have  been  glad  to  have 
loved  her  dead  brother's  child  if  she  could  have  brought  her 
down  to  the  proper  point  of  discipline.  She  seemed  as  if  «lie 


FENCED  IN.  83 

should  have  been  a  boy,  not  a  girl,  she  was  so  distressingly 
strong  and  healthy,  so  large  altogether  !  And  how  obtuse !  It 
was  impossible  to  make  her  understand  anything  unless  it  was 
put  into  the  plainest  language;  and  as  for  a  hint,  you  might  as 
well  expect  a  blind  man  to  see  you  beckon  to  him  as  Patricia 
to  receive  a  hint.  .How  different  from  dear  Dora's  marvellous 
delicacy  of  perception,  and  that  tact  which  was  almost  like 
another  sense ! 

Mrs.  Hamley  had  some  reason  for  this  last  lamentation,  for 
Patricia  was  indeed  impervious  to  all  the  lessons  conveyed  by 
the  way  of  dignified  carriage  and  silent  reproof.  When  Aunt 
Hamley  answered  her  loud  and  frankly-worded  questions  in  a 
voice  so  low  and  level  that  the  girl's  quick  senses  could  hardly 
catch  the  words — answered  her  vaguely,  without  looking  at  her, 
never  if  possible  giving  her  the  information  she  asked,  saying, 
"  I  do  not  know,"  when  the  thing  was  part  of  her  very  exist- 
ence, and  speaking  with  a  deep  sigh  and  an  oppressive  polite- 
ness— Patricia  used  to  think  that  perhaps  poor  Aunt  had  a 
headache;  poor  Aunt  often  seemed  to  have  headaches;  and  she 
used  to  look  at  her  so  compassionately  that  Mrs.  Hamley  some- 
times rebuked  her  for  her  pertinacity,  and  told  her  sharply 
that  it  was  ill-bred  to  stare. 

When  the  girl  wished  to  surround  her  with  those  little  at- 
tentions which  some  girls  like  to  show  their  elders,  and  which 
certain  women  hate  to  receive  unasked — when  she  carried 
sacred  pillows  as  if  they  had  been  kittens  by  the  middle  under 
her  arm— sacred  pillows  from  sacred  sofas,  which  dear  Dora 
would  not  have  deranged  for  worlds — and  wanted  to  stuff  them 
into  Aunt's  easy  chair  where  they  did  not  lit,  and  only  threw 
her  too  far  forward  and  made  her  uncomfortable ;  when  she 
plunged  about  for  foo.tstb'ols,  and  denuded  corners  of  their 
rightful  ornaments,  and  made  a  commotion  for  kindness,  when 
all  that  Mrs.  Hamley  asked  was  peace  and  quietness  ;  the  poor, 
starched,  self-centred  lady  thought  she  should  have  gone  dis- 
tracted. She  could  not  bear  it ;  nor  did  she  attempt  to  conceal 
that  her  niece's  zeal  without  discretion  made  her  headache 
worse  than  ever. 

She  used  to  call  dear  Dora  to  undo  in  her  quiet,  gliding, 
soothing  way  what  Patricia  had  done  with  such  enthusiastic 
goodwill  and  tumultuous  philanthropy.  And  then  Patricia 


84  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  IX),  LOVE  ?  " 

used  to  feel  snubbed  in  spite  of  her  determination  to  see  only 
the  best  side  of  everything,  and  to  be  satisfied  with  her  fate 
whatever  it  was.  She  used  to  wonder  vaguely  what  it  all 
meant,  and  how  it  was  she  so  evidently  failed  to  please  when 
she  tried  so  hard.  After  which  she  would  redouble  her  efforts 
by  the  very  fact  of  her  failure  ;  continuing  in  the  vicious  circle 
that  never  knew  a  break  for  better  things. '  If  her  aunt  had 
only  spoken  to  her  straightly  and  kindly,  the  whole  thing 
would  have  been  put  right.  But  she  wanted  her  to  divine 
what  she  would  not  explain ;  and  then  was  annoyed  at  her 
denseness  of  perception. 

Perhaps  the  person  most  to  be  pitied  at  this  time  was  Dora. 
She  knew  exactly  where  the  hitch  was,  but  she  had  not  suffi- 
cient generosity  or  truth  either  to  warn  Patricia  or  to  defend 
her.  She  was  of  the  order  of  false  prophets  who  prophesy 
smooth  things,  and  cry  peace  when  there  is  no  peace.  She  was 
of  those  who  are  all  things  to  all  men,  and  always  adopted  the 
colours  of  her  company.  She  played  echo  in  private  to  Mrs. 
Hamley's  complainings  and  agreed  with  her  that  Patricia  was  a 
dreadful  infliction,  and  the  most  badly  brought-up  young  person 
of  her  degree  to  be  found  within  the  four  seas.  But  she  was 
careful  not  to  go  a  line  beyond  her  pattern ;  else,  if  she  had, 
Mrs.  Hamley  would  have  been  down  on  her  for  injustice,  and 
would  have  taken  Patricia's  part  with  vigour  if  acridity. 

To  Patricia,  when  alone,  she  was  sweet  and  flattering  as  if  to 
atone  for  the  burden  of  snubbing  she  had  to  bear ;  but  in  pub- 
lic, before  the  Hamleys,  she  was  quite  well-bred  but  not  even 
familiar,  still  less  affectionate  ;  which  sometimes  amazed  Patri- 
cia, and  seemed  to  make  her  whole  life  a  thaumatrope  where 
things  jumped  about  and  changed  places,  she  could  not  tell  how 
or  why.  For  the  matter  of  that  however,  she  had  fallen  in 
love,  girl-like,  with  Mr.  Hamley':;  pretffy,  graceful,  well-man- 
nered young  cousin ;  and  love  with  Patricia  meant  the  patience 
as  well  as  the  steadfastness  of  loyalty. 

Meanwhile,  Mr.  Hamley  looked  on  and  chuckled.  It  was  a 
triumph  to  him,  and  he  enjoyed  it.  That  the  blood-cousin  of 
Ledbury's  office-boy  should  be  such  an  undoubted  success,  and 
the  grand-daughter  of  Admiral  Sir  Robert  Kemball,  K.C.  B., 
such  an  undeniable  failure,  tickled  him  between  the  ribs  of  his 
vanity  deliciously.  He  took  no  open  part  in  the  small  femi- 


FENCED  IN.  85 

nine  warfare  going  on  in  the  drawing-room,  further  than  by 
almost  ignoring  Patricia  altogether ;  for  which  he  received 
more  than  one  sharp  rebuke  from  Mrs.  HamJey  in  private,  and 
a  cold  demand  whether  he  did  not  think  her  niece  deserved  a 
little  more  courtesy  at  his  hands  ?  But  he  knew  too  well  the 
shaky  character  of  the  ground  he  had  to  traverse  daily  to  act 
on  the  spirit  of  this  rebuke.  If  he  had  befriended  Patricia  in 
the  smallest  degree,  he  would  have  been  called  to  order  on  the 
charge  of  affording  comfort  and  support  to  a  rebel ;  and,  of  the 
two,  he  thought  the  attitude  of  non  intervention  the  safer. 


* 


86  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER  IX. 

DORA  DEMONSTRATES. 

» ATRICIA  had  been  about  a  month  at  Abbey  Holme,  and 
things  had  not  mended.  She  still  filled  the  domestic 
atmosphere  with  sticks  and  straws,  and  still  made  poor 
Aunt's  headaches  greatly  worse  by  her  endeavours  to  make  them 
better  ;  fighting  bravely  the  while  against  the  material  and 
moral  inharmoniousness  of  her  life,  and  refusing  to  confess  to 
herself  how  unutterably  lonely  and  misplaced  she  was.  She 
had  never  greater  need  than  now  of  all  her  courage  and  all  her 
cheerfulness.  Overheated  rooms ;  no  personal  liberty ;  no  fresh 
air  ;  no  exercise — for  she  did  not  call  driving  in  a  close  car- 
riage, with  only  one  window  open  a  couple  of  inches,  either 
fresh  air  or  exercise ;  the  staple  occupation  of  the  day  needle- 
work enlivened  by  novel -reading  aloud — and  the  stories  such 
trash  !  thought  unimaginative  Patricia,  who  had  not  matricu- 
lated in  the  college  of  light  literature,  and  who  cared  for 
nothing  that  was  not  true  ; — cards  in  the  evening — be"zique,  or 
three-handed  whist — and  she  did  not  know  a  king  from  an  ace, 
and  could  not  learn  the  simplest  rules  ;  food  a  world  too  rich 
and  too  frequent  for  a  girl  brought  up  as  she  had  been  on  the 
plainest  fare,  and  who,  naturally  unsensual,  had  been  taught 
asceticism  over  and  above — a  girl  whose  appetite  for  bread  and- 
butter,  at  its  highest  point,  was  never  satisfied  at  a  table  which 
gave  everything  but  simplicity,  cold  water,  and  reasonable 
"  rounds"  :  all  these  things  together  were  as  much  as  her  strong 
health  could  bear  without  breakitng  up  under  the  change.  Add 
to  material  circumstances  so  uncongenial,  a  life  of  moral  repres- 
sion, of  lovelessness,  and  the  sentiment  of  being  always  in  dis- 
grace, and  it  is  easy  to  understand  that  if  Patricia  was  not  an 
acquisition,  for  her  own  part,  to  the  new  world  which  had  re- 
ceived her,  this  new  world  was  not  of  the  kind  to  give  her 
happiness  or  to  bring  out  the  best  that  was  in  her. 
Cue  day,  after  she  had  been  making  more  than  her  usual 


I 


DORA  DEMONSTRATES.  87 

amount  of  whirlwind  in  the  drawing  room,  and  had  been  snub- 
bed with  even  more  than  Aunt  Hamley's  usual  amount  of  cold 
acerbity,  she  went  up-stairs  to  her  own  room  to  overcome  a 
certain  miserable  sensation  of  loneliness  and  mistake  which 
threatened  to  overcome  her. 

When  she  had  gone  Mrs.  Hamley  laid  her  work  and  her 
hands  into  her  lap  with  a  gesture  of  angry  despair.  Dora  looked 
at  her,  and  laid  her  work  down  too  with  a  look  of  sympathetic 
annoyance. 

"  Dora,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  severely,  "  I  had  hoped  that  you 
would  have  helped  me  in  this  affliction,  this  trial,  as  I  may  call 
it.  For  though  she  is  my  own  niece,  and  I  should  wish  to  love 
her  and  do  my  duty  by  her,  she  is  an  affliction  all  the  same, 
wretched  child  !  I  have  been  disappointed  in  you,  Dora.  You 
have  shown  less  than  your  usual  tact,  and  not  the  amiability 
I  might  ha«e  expected  from  you." 

"  I  am  sorry  that  I  have  failed  in  any  way,  dear,"  said  Dora 
sweetly.  "  What  can  I  do  to  help  you  ?  I  will  do  anything  I 
can,  as  you  know." 

She  spoke  with  her  slight  lisp  and  put  on  her  prettiest  air  of 
feminine  subjection ;  and  Mrs.  Hamley  telt  a  little  relief  in 
remonstrating  severely  with  so  unresisting  a  creature.  It 
soothed  her,  on  the  principle  of  passing  it  on. 

"  Why  do  you  ask  me  what  you  are  to  do?"  she  answered 
irritably.  "Does  not  your  own  common-sense  tell  you?  have 
you  no  conscience  to  dictate  your  duty?  You  ought  to  talk  to 
her,  Dora,  and  tell  her  not  to  be  so  noisy  and  officious,  not  to 
speak  till  she  is  spoken  to,  and  not  to  take  so  much  on  herself. 
It  will  come  easier  from  you  than  from  me,  and  perhaps  you 
v.  ill  have  more  influence  than  I  should  have." 

"  I  will  tell  her,  of  course,  if  you  like,  dear,"  said  Dora,  des- 
perately troubled  in  spite  of  her  suave  manner.  She  did  not 
want  to  wound  Patricia  any  more  than  to  offend  Mrs.  Hamley. 
For  if  it  was  difficult  for  her  to  refuse  a  request,  or  to  stand  up  for 
her  own  rights,  it  was  still  more  difficult  to  voluntarily  offend. 
Face-to-face  aggression  was  not  in  Dora  Drummond's  way,  and 
she  would  have  rather  Mrs.  Hamley  had  deprived  her  of  every 
fcind  of  enjoyment  for  a  week  than  have  bidden  her  do  this  thing. 

"  Yes,  it  will  come  better  from  you,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley. 

"  YOU  horrid  old  coward  1 "  thought  dear  Dora,  with  a  timid, 


88  -WHAT  wouin  yon  no,  LOVE?" 

plaintive  little  smile  that  meant  the  sweetest,  most  complying 
submission. 

"You  are  girls  together,  and  can  make  her  understand  her 
position  here  and  her  duties  better  than  I,"  continued  the  lady. 
"Take  her  out  for  a  walk  to-day.  You  can  talk  better  when 
you  are  walking  than  driving.  You  have  not  been  out  for  a 
walk,  too,  for  a  long  while,  and  it  will  do  you  good :  you  are 
looking  quite  pale  for  want  of  exercise,  Dora  ;  you  sit  far  too 
much  in  the  house — and  then  you  can  talk  to  her.  But  don't 
go  beyond  the  town,  and  don't  let  her  think  that  I  have  told  you 
to  speak  to  her.  I  want  it  to  come  as  if  naturally  from  yourself ; 
as  indeed  it  would  have  done  if  you  had  had  as  much  common- 
sense  as  I  always  gave  you  credit  for." 

"  Very  well,  dear,  I  will  go  and  I  will  do  my  best,"  said  Dora 
with  graceful  obedience ;  very  quiet  in  action  but  a  little  flushed, 
her  eyes  eager  beneath  their  long,  light,  silky  lashes  as  she  put 
away  her  embroidery,  deliberately,  noiselessly,  neatly,  as  she 
did  all  things. 

She  kissed  Mrs.  Hamley  on  her  forehead,  and  saw  that  her 
ready  obedience  had  dispersed  the  little  cloud  and  reinstated 
her  in  her  old  place  of  prime  favourite  }  then  went  to  her  own 
room,  where  she  first  wrote  a  short  note  very  rapidly,  and  when 
this  was  finished  ran  lightly  along  the  thickly-carpeted  corridor 
to  Patricia's  room.  She  found  her  also  writing — to  Gordon 
Frere  ;  not  saying  that  she  was  unhappy,  but  unconsciously 
showing  that  she  was  so  by  the  very  pains  she  took  to  conceal  it. 

"  Busy,  dear  1"  said  Dora,  putting  in  her  gracious  head  as  if 
timidly  asking;  permission  through  the  half-opened  door. 

"  Oh,  no,  not  if  you  want  me  ! "  cried  Patricia,  attentive,  up- 
right, alive  at  all  points  as  usual.  "  Come  in — do  come  in  ! " 

"Thanks.  I  came  to  ask  you  if  you  would  go  for  a  walk 
with  nve,"  said  Dora,  gliding  forward  and  carefully  shutting  the 
door  after  her. 

"  Yes,  indeed,  that  I  will,"  Patricia  answered  with  unneces- 
sary alacrity.  "  I  am  longing  for  a  walk !  It  seems  a  year 
sinc^  I  had  a  breath  of  fresh  air." 

"Good  gracious  !  what  do  you  call  this  ?"  said  Dora,  shiver- 
im?  as  she  pointed  to  the  open  window.  "  Sitting  with  the 
wi»dow  open,  and  no  fire  even,  just  before  Christmas!  I  won- 
dwr  it  does  not  kill  you  1 " 


DORA  DEMONSTRATES.  89 

"  No,  it  is  the  only  thing  that  keeps  me  alive,  I  think.  But 
I  need  not  torture  you,  dear,"  said  Patricia,  shutting  down  the 
window  as  she  spoke ;  and  as  she  shut  it  with  good  will  she  did  it 
somewhat  noisily.  "  If  you  only  knew,  Dora,  how  I  long  some- 
times for  the  great  strong  wind  of  Barsands !"  she  went  on  to  say. 
"  I  feel  as  if  I  should  like  to  sit  on  the  top  of  an  iceberg  in  a 
gale  of  wind  after  I  have  been  down  in  the  drawing-room  for  a 
few  hours.  How  you  and  -Aunt  Hamley  can  bear  the  stifling 
heat  and  want  of  fresh  air  of  your  lives  is  more  surprising  to 
me  than  my  open  windows  can  be  to  you." 

"  Then  you  are  not  happy  here  ] "  said  Dora,  going  nearer 
to  her  and  laying  her  hand  on  her  shoulder. 

"  Don't  think  me  ungrateful — indeed,  I  am  not  that !  "  an- 
swered Patricia  hastily  ;  "  but  I  do  miss  the  boating  and  fresh 
air  and  freedom  of  the  old  life  !  This  seems  to  me  like  being 
in  a  hot-house  prison  in  comparison."  She  drew  a  long  breath, 
and  looked  out  on  the  beds  of  coloured  stone  that  rose  up  close 
against  her  window,  surmounted  by  the  grey  stone  wall  which 
shut  out  all  view  of  the  country  beyond  ;  her  eyes  full  of  infi- 
nite yearning,  and  the  brave,  cheerful  face  saddened. 

"  We  have  been  use'd  to  such  a  different  life  from  yours," 
said  Dora  soothingly.  "  It  must  be  strange  to  you." 

"  Yes,  it  is,"  said  Patricia  simply,  and  sighing. 

"  I  should  like  to  make  you  happy,"  continued  Mr.  Hamley's 
cousin,  her  lips  quivering  slightly.  She  was  skating  round  the 
central  subject,  and  amiable  coward  as  she  was, she  did  not  like  it. 

"  If  I  could  be  always  alone  with  you  I  should  be  happy," 
said  Patricia.  "  I  daresay  it  is  my  own  fault  that  I  do  not  get 
on  so  well  with  my  aunt  and  Mr.  Hamley  as  I  ought.  They 
don't  seem  to  understand  what  I  mean  sometimes,  and  perhaps 
I  do  not  understand  them  ;  but  with  you  it  is  different — when 
we  are  alone,"  she  added  by  an  after-thought;  "  then  I  am  quite 
happy ! " 

Dora  kissed  her  with  her  butterfly  kind  of  kiss.    "  You  dear 
little  thing,  you  know  I  like  you,  don't  you  ?"  she  said  to  the 
tall  girl  who  stood  a  couple  of  inches  or  more  above  her,  and . 
whose  strong  hand  was  like  a  man's  compared  with  her  own 
useless  little  compress  of  rose-leaves. 

"  I  hope  so,"  answered  Patricia,  looking  at  her  fondly. 

"  Hope  1 "  remonstrated  Dora. 


90  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  Sometimes  I  think  you  do,  and  sometimes  I  think  yon  do 
not,"  said  Patricia  candidly.  "  At  all  events" — frankly,  warmly 
— "  I  love  you  Dora,  and  would  do  anything  in  the  world  I 
could  for  you ;  and  that  you  know." 

Dora  gave  a  graceful  little  deprecatory  shrug.  •'  But  there 
is  nothing  in  me  to  like,"  she  said  sweetly,  glancing  at  herself 
in  the  glass  and  putting  up  her  hand  to  smooth  back  her  glossy 
hair. 

"  Oh  ! "  cried  Patricia,  who  took  everything  literally.  "  How 
can  you  say  so,  Dora  !  Why,  you  must  know  what  a  darling 
you  are ! " 

Dora  cast  up  her  blue  eyes  shyly.  This  love-making  between 
girls  seemed  to  her  odd  beyond  measure  ;  but  she  was  glad  of 
it,  as  it  made  her  task  so  much  the  easier. 

"  Do  you  really  think  so  ]  That  is  because  you  are  so  nice 
and  good  yourself,"' she  said. 

"  No ;  it  is  because  you  are  so  nice  and  good,"  flung  back 
Patricia  as  antistrophe. 

"  You  dear  thing  !  "  breathed  Dora.  "If  you  think  so,  really 
and  truly,  and  do  not  merely  flatter  me,  you  must  let  me  be  your 
guide  and  mentor  here."  She  was  looking  at  Patricia  steadily 
enough  for  her,  but  lisping  more  than  usual.  "  You  see,  dear, 
I  am  worlds  older  than  you,  a,nd  I  can  tell  you  some  things, 
perhaps,  you  do  not  know." 

"  Every  kind  of  thing,"  said  Patricia. 

"No,  not  quite  that,  but  some  things.  For  instance,  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  Hamley  are  the  dearest  people  in  the  world,  and  I 
am  immensely  fond  of  them — as  indeed  I  ought  to  be,  for  they 
have  done  everything  for  me — but  they  are  just  a  little  particu- 
lar and  peculiar.  I  can  quite  see  where  you  will  rub  against 
their  angles,  you  dear  thing,  and  get  into  trouble,  if  you  do  not 
take  care.  I  know  them  so  well,  the  dears  !  and  you  do  not, 
you  see." 

"  But  I  only  want  to  please  them,"  said  Patricia,  opening  her 
eyes.  "  I  try  all  day  long  to  please  my  aipt.  It  is  my  duty, 
you  know,"  she  added  gravely. 

"  Yes,  I  know  that,  dear,"  Dora  said,  looking  down.  "  But," 
raising  her  eyes  suddenly  as  if  a  thought  had  just  struck  her, 
"  wanting  is  not  enough — we  have  to  learn  how ;  and  you  must 
learn  how." 


DORA  .DEMONSTRATES.  91 

"  Tell  me  -where  T  fail ;  I  will  learn  anything  from  you,"  said 
Patricia  in  her  loud,  clear,  open  voice. 

"  That  is  very  nice  of  you  ;  so  let  me  give  you  your  first 
lesson,"  lisped  Dora.  "Do  not  speak  so  loud;  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Hamley  do  not  like  it.  ^They  have  a  hoicor  of  all  noise.  Don't 
you  notice  how  softly  every  one  speaks  here,  and  how  silently 
every  one  moves  about,  and  how  quiet  the  whole  house  is  1 " 

"  Yes,  and  I  thought  I  spoke  softly  too.  T  am  sure  I  do 
ever  so  much  more  than  I  used  at  Barsands  ;  for  dearest  uncle 
was  a  little  deaf,  and  I  had  to  raise  my  voice  there.  But  here 
I  thought  I  spoke  as  soft  as  possible !" 

Dora  gave  a  little  smile.  It  was  a  faint,  evanescent  little 
smile,  but  it  was  eloquent. 

"  Do  you  really  mean  to  say,  Dora,  that  I  speak  too  loud  1 " 

"  Rather,"  said  Dora  in  the  tones  that  conveyed  the  sense  ot 
"  very  much." 

"  I  feel  stronger  and  bigger  than  you  and  Aunt  Hamley,  cer- 
tainly," Patricia  went  on  in  a  reflective  kind  of  way.  "  Am  I 
too  strong  and  big  for  you  1 " 

"  A  little,"  repeated  Dora. 

"  I  did  not  feel  so  at  Barsands,  but  somehow  I  feel  different 
altogether  here,"  said  Patricia  sorrowfully. 

At  that  moment  she  felt  as  if  she  was  all  wrong  everywhere. 
Hitherto  so  unconscious,  never  thinking  of  herself,  scarcely 
knowing  whether  she  was  tall  or  short,  dark  or  fair,  she  sud- 
denly awakened  to  the  perception  of  a  vulgar,  ungainly,  un- 
lovable personality  of  which  she  had  been  wholly  ignorant.  It 
was  not  so  much  wounded  vanity  that  she  felt,  as  sorrow  that 
she  was  so  disagreeable  to  others ;  and — how  horrible  she  must 
be  to  Dora  !  Tears  stood  in  her  eyes,  but  even  Dora  could  see 
that  they  were  something  deeper  and  purer  than  tears  of  mere 
petty  girlish  vexation. 

"  But  now  that  I  have  told  you,  dear,  you  will  try  to  im- 
prove, will  you  not]"  Dora  asked . coaxingly,  sorry  to  see  her 
humiliation  but  glad  of  her  sensitiveness. 

"  Yes,  I  will  try.  I  am  sorry  I  am  so  big  and  loud,"  said 
Patricia  humbly. 

"  Yes,  it  is  a  pity,"  said  Dora  in  a  matter-of-fact  way.  "  And 
now  that  we  are  on  the  subject,  let  me  give  you  a  word  of 
advice  about  Mrs.  Hamley.  Dear  thing,  she  is  just — what 


92  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

shall  I  say  ? — the  least  bit  in  the  world  fidgety  ;  and  you  must 
not  fidget  her  if  you  want  to  please  her." 

"  But  do  I  ? "  asked  Patricia,  in  the  same  surprised  way  as 
that  in  which  she  had  asked  if  her  voice  was  loud. 

"  Dreadfully,"  said  Dora.  . 

"Dora?  how?" 

"  By  fussing  about  her;  bringing  her  cushions  and  footstools, 
and  wanting  her  to  have  tea,  and  all  that  kind  of  thing." 

"  But  if  she  has  a  headache  ?  It  seems  so  unkind  to  leave 
her  to  herself  and  do  nothing  !"  urged  Patricia. 

"  I  think  you  will  find  that  the  wisest  plan  though,"  said 
Dora  dryly.  "  I  know  her  better  than  you  do,  and  my  advice 
to  you  is  not  to  notice  her  headaches,  and  never  to  ask  her  if 
you  shall  bring  anything  or  do  anything  for  her  till  she  tells 
you.  You  never  see  me  fuss  about  her  as  you  do." 

"  No,  but  then  I  am  her  niece,"  said  Patricia  naively. 

Dora  shot  a  glance  at  her  from  under  her  lashes  that  was  not 
quite  so  dovelike  as  her  usual  glances. 

"  And  I  have  lived  with  her  all  these  years,"  she  said  quietly, 
"and  am  like  her  own  child.  Which  do  you  think  has  the 
most  right  to  take  things  on  herself,  you  or  I  ?  And  if  I  do 
not  hang  about  her,  and  worry  her  with  requests  to  do  this  for 
her,  or  jump  up  to  fetch  that  without  asking  her  if  I  may,  and 
without  her  telling  me  that  I  am  to  do  so,  need  you,  do  you 
think  ? " 

"  No ;  I  see  you  are  right,"  said  Patricia. 

"  You  do  not  mind  my  saying  all  this  to  you,  dear  ?  it  is  only 
for  your  own  good,"  then  said  Dora  with  a  little  sigh.  Her 
corvfo  was  accomplished,  and  she  was  glad  it  had  been  so  easy 
— glad,  too,  that  Patricia  had  been  so  obtuse  in  some  directions 
if  so  amiably  impressible  in  others. 

"Mind  1  I  am  very  much  obliged  to  you  !"  cried  the  poor 
girl.  "  I  only  wish  I  was  like  you,  Dora,  and  then  I  should  be 
all  right.  No,  I  do  not,"  she  added  with  sudden  reflection. 
"  I  am  better  as  I  am  for  my  own  life ;  for  if  I  had  been  like 
you  when  the  Mermaid  went  to  pieces  we  should  have  all  been 
drowned.  You  would  never  have  held  on  ;  and  you  would  have 
fainted  when  you  were  hauJed  up ;  and  then  there  would  not 
have  been  time  to  have  saved  dear  uncle  and  Gordon.  Oh, 
Dora  I  it  was  awful  to  look  down  and  see  that  tremendous  aurf, 


DORA  DEMONSTRATES  93 

and  the  poor  little  Mermaid  just  like  a  live  thing  beaten  to 
death,  and  dear  uncle  and  Gordon  on  board  her,  looking  as  if 
they  must  go  to  the  bottom  at  every  wave.  I  shall  never  forget 
that  moment ;  and  I  dream  of  it  so  often.  Ah,  that  was  real  !  " 

And  all  these  petty  crosses  and  distresses  and  tempers  and 
un  fitnesses,  they  were  not  real,  her  heart  said.  They  were  fac- 
titious, rootless  ;  and  as  she  looked  back  the  truth  of  the  past 
overshadowed  the  small  and  wearying  falsehood  of  the  present ; 
and  she  forgot  the  ugly  self  just  revealed  to  her,  and  the  loud 
voice  and  the  officious  activities  of  her  misplaced  sense  of 
duty;  and  even  the  importance  of  Aunt  Harnley's  headaches 
was  diminished  in  her  vivid  recollection  of  the  living  love  of 
Barsands,  and  the  desperate  peril  of  that  awful  hour. 

"  Well,  don't  think  of  it  any  more  just  now,"  said  Dora 
briskly.  She  was  disinclined  by  temperament  to  things  sad 
or  horrible.  "  The  best  of  the  day  is  going  and  we  must 
have  our  walk."  ^ 

"  Very  well,"  said  Patricia,  shaking  back  her  hair,  and 
brushing  her  hand  over  her  eyes  as  if  to  free  them  from  some 
picture  that  would  remain  in  them.  "  I  shall  be  ready  in  a 
minute." 

"  And  I  not  for  ten,"  lisped  Dora,  laughing.  "  But  then  I 
take  pains  with  myself,  and  am  more  particular  than  you  how 
I  put  on  my  things." 

This  was  meant  as  another  lesson  ;  for  the  girl's  want  of 
personal  trimness  annoyed  Aunt  Harnley  almost  as  much  as 
her  overplus  of  attention.  But  hints  were  Lost  on  Patricia,  and 
her  toilet  was  performed  to-day  in  the  old  rapid  way  of  yester- 
day and  as  it  would  be  to  morrow  Dora  thought  disdainfully, 
unless  she  was  fairly  forced  to  pay  more  regard  to  herself. 
What  an  uncouth,  clumsy,  horrid  way  of  bringing  up  a  girl ! 
she  thought  again,  scanning  here  an  end  adrift  and  there  a  tie 
askew.  Captain  Kemball  could  not  have  been  a  nice  man,  and 
Dora  questioned  if  he  had  been  a  good  one  ;  for  was  not  per- 
sonal attractiveness  the  main  part  of  the  religion  of  life  in  her 
estimation  as  also  in  Aunt  Hamley's  1  and  was  not  a  woman's 
indifference  to  appearance  worse  than  even  her  indifference  to 
virtue  1 

The  walk  was  a  pleasant  one,  albeit  neither  eventful  nor 
exciting.  It  was  simply  a  walk  through  the  garden  and  the 


94  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

park  and  down  the  lane  fenced  in  by  two  high,  trim,  closely- 
sheared  banks,  and  so  on  to  the  main  road,  which  had  a  side 
walk  like  a  gentleman's  garden-path,  gas-lamps,  telegraph 
wires,  and  more  shear -work  visible.  But  it  gave  Patricia  a 
sense  of  relative  freedom  to  be  outside  Abbey  Holme  gates 
without  a  footman  behind  her,  as  had  been  insisted  on  the  only 
time  when  she  had  been  beyond  the  grounds  alone  and  on 
foot  since  her  arrival. 

Her  aunt  wanted  to  break  her  of  this  love  of  rambling 
among  other  undesirable  propensities.  She  did  not  choose  to 
do  it  by  denial,  so  she  adopted  the  plan  of  nullifying  the  plea- 
sure. And  it  had  answered.  A  footman  at  her  heels  was  even 
worse  tban  home-keeping,  and  Patricia  had  never  repeated  her 
request  for  a  long  walk  by  herself ;  consequently  the  little  ex 
pedition  to-day  was  a  glimpse  of  better  things  that  inspirited 
her.  And  Dora,  having  fulfilled  her  disagreeable  task,  and 
said  her  say  successfully,  was  sweeter  than  ever,  as  if  to  make 
up  for  reproofs  in  which  Patricia  saw  only  the  truest  friendliness. 
So  they  walked  and  talked  and  laughed— at  least  Patricia 
laughed  and  Dora  smiled — till  they  came  to  the  High  Street  of 
Milltown,  whither  they  were  bound. 

Patricia  was  neither  observant  nor  suspicious.  Had  she  been 
either  to  even  a  moderate  extent,  she  would  have  seen  Dora's 
fair  face  flush  gradually  a  deeper  and  deeper,  if  prettier,  rose- 
pink  as  they  approached  Milltown  ;  she  would  have  seen  her  blue 
eyes  look  furtively  from  side  to  side,  as  if  expecting  to  see  some 
one  beside  the  day-labourers  and  petty  shop-keepers,  who  lounged 
up  the  roadway,  or  stood  in  their  shirt-sleeves  by  their  doors ; 
she  would  have  seen  her  slide  her  hand  into  her  pocket,  where 
her  fingers  played  nervously  with  the  little  note  she  had  written 
in  such  haste  before  leaving  home,  ready  to  drop  it  into  the 

post  as  they  returned,  unless And  seeing  all   this,  she 

would  probably  have  connected  therewith  the  handsome  young 
man  who  came  suddenly  out  on  them  from  the  Bank  as  they 
were  passing  that  establishment,  and  greeted  Dora  with  a 
strange  look  of  eagerness  and  familiarity. 

"  How  do  you  do,  Mr.  Lowe  1"  said  Dora,  her  face  dimpled 
into  the  most  enchanting  smile  as  she  put  her  hand  in  his. 
When  their  hands  unclasped,  Mr.  Sydney  Lowe's  held  the  note. 
"  Miss  Kemball,"  she  added,  indicating  Patricia. 


DORA  DEMONSTRATES.  95 

The  young  man  gave  the  new  arrival  a  sharp,  bold  stare — that 
comprehensive,  analytical  kind  of  survey  which  women  resent 
as  an  impertinence — and  which  is  one,  and  is  meant  to  be  one. 
Then,  as  if  he  had  seen  nothing  in  her  worthy  his  attention,  he 
turned  again  to  Dora  with  the  ^ame  eager  and  familiar  look  as 
before,  and  began  talking  to  her  rapidly  in  French.  As  they 
were  going  up  the  street,  he  walked  with  them  ;  and  because 
the  side-walk  was  too  narrow  for  the  three  abreast,  Patricia 
went  on  alone  before  and  the  two  kept  behind,  still  talking. 
And  even  when  they  had  executed  Mrs.  Hamley's  weighty 
commissions  of  matching  a  skein  of  wool  at  one  shop,  buying  a 
yard  of  ribbon  at  another,  ordering  a  tin  of  preserved  lobster 
at  the  grocer's,  and  getting  an  order  for  thirteen  and  four- 
pence  from  the  post-office,  even  then  this  young,  handsome 
man  with  the  bold  black  eyes,  thin  nose  and  loose  lips,  kept 
close  to  Dora's  side,  always  with  the  same  unmistakable  expres- 
sion oi  imperiousness  and  familiarity  on  his  face,  and  always 
talking  to  her  in  French. 

After  having  walked  with  them  till  they  came  within  sight 
of  the  Abbey  Holme  gates,  he  finally  took  his  leave.  But  his 
last  words  were  many  and  apparently  difficult  to  say.  He  and 
Dora  stood  together  in  the  road,  face  to  face,  so  long  in  the 
bitter  December  twilight  that  even  Patricia  was  chilled  ;  and 
when  they  parted  Dora's  eyes  were  moist  with  tears  and  the 
young  man's  dark  with  anger  and  impatience.  But  they  finally 
said  good-bye  for  the  last  time  and  the  two  girls  walked  in 
silence  up  the  lane. 

Then  said  Dora  in  her  softest  jmd  most  caressing  voice,  glanc- 
ing sideways  at  Patricia,  not  looking  at  her  openly  :  "  Patricia 
dear,  if  Mrs.  Hamley  asks  if  we  met  any  one,  you  need  not  say 
Mr.  Lowe  walked  with  us.  Of  course  I  shall  say  that  we  saw 
him  if  she  asks  me  ;  but  you  need  not  tell  her  more. 

Patricia  turned  her  large  grey  eyes  full  on  the  fair  face  with 
its  sweet  look  trying  so  hard  to  appear  unconscious  beside  her, 
and  succeeding  marvellously  well. 

"  Why  not  1  she  asked  in  a  tone  of  surprise.  "  What  harm 
was  there  fn  it  ? " 

"No  harm  at  all,"  Dora  answered.  "But  Mrs.  Hamley, 
though  the  dearest  darling  in  the  world,  is  a  little  particular,  and 
perhaps  the  might  not  like  it." 


96  .        "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  tX),  LOVE  ? " 

"  Then  we  ought  not  to  have  done  it,"  said  Patricia  gravely. 

"  I  should  like  to  know  how  I  could  have  helped  it  when  he 
would  come  ! "  cried  Dora  pettishly. 

And  Patricia  had  an  uneasy  sense  of  something  wrong,  she 
could  not  say  exactly  what.  There  was  surely  nothing  to  be 
ashamed  of  in  two  girls  meeting  a  young  man  and  his  turning 
back  and  walking  with  them !  Gordon  had  done  so  to  her  a 
hundred  times  and  more ;  and  she  had  never  felt  she  ought  not 
to  tell  her  uncle,  or  that  he  would  have  disliked  it  when  he 
was  told.  But  she  thought  to  herself  that  if  she  had  not 
wished  Gordon  to  turn  back  and  walk  with  her  she  would  have 
made  him  understand  so  clearly.  She  would  not  have  talked 
to  him  so  much,  and  then  complained  that  he  would  come.  But 
Dora  was  so  amiable,  she  could  not  give  pain,  she  thought 
again,  half  angry  with  herself  that  she  had  felt  even  this  passing 
sense  of  wrong. 

Patricia,  however,  was  not  put  to  the  test.  Her  aunt  asked  her 
no  questions  ;  and  when  she  had  gone  upstairs,  and  Mrs.  Hamley 
reproached  Dora  fretfully  for  being  so  late,  Dora  answered 
with  the  tenderest  little  air  of  patience  and  contrition  united  : 

"  Yes,  I  know  we  are  very  late,  dear ;  but  Patricia  wanted  so 
much  to  see  the  town  I  could  not  refuse  to  show  her  every- 
thing I  could  think  of." 

"  That  girl  is  always  wanting  something  she  should  not  1 " 
said  Mrs.  Hamley  irritably. 

"  It  is  better  when  people  are  accustomed  to  things  a  little 
before  they  are  quite  grown  up,"  Dora  put  in  sensibly. 

"  Oh,  I  hate  your  blase'es  girls  who  know  everything,"  said 
Mrs.  Hamley;  and  Dora  answered  "Yes,  so  do  I,"  with  un- 
ruffled serenity. 

So  Mrs.  Hamley  never  knew  anything  about  Sydney  Lowe 
and  his  eager  and  familiar  looks,  his  long  and  rapid  conversa- 
tion in  French,  those  difficult  farewells,  and  Dora's  troubled 
eyes.  There  was  evidently  a  secret  connected  with  this  young 
man,  and  a  secret  that  gave  Dora  some  concern.  For  she  cried 
that  night  when  she  went  to  bed — just  a  little ;  she  had  too 
much  respect  for  her  eyes  to  cry  much  ;  and  once  figging  her 
pretty  head  impatiently  on  the  pillow,  said  half  aloud  :  "  How 
I  wish  I  had  never  seen  him !  and  oh !  how  I  wish  I  had  re- 
fused and  never  done  it  I " 


OV£B  Xiili   WINE  AND   VVALNUig.  9? 


CHAPTER  X. 

OVER  THE  WINE  AND  WALNUTS. 

N  almost  every  country  place  there  is  at  least  one  young 
man  who  has,  sometimes  vaguely,  sometimes  manifestly 

*  why,  what  the  world  calls  a  bad  character.  Perhaps  no 
definite  charge  can  be  brought  against  him,  but  none  the  less 
ill-re'  mte  lias  crept  like  a  mildew  over  his  name.  Respectable 
people  are  cool  to  him ;  careful  mothers  keep  their  daughters 
out  of  his  way ;  prudent  fathers  warn  their  sons  against  too 
close  intimacy  with  him ;  and  he  is  the  acknowledged  black 
sheep  of  the  community,  tolerated  only  because  of  his  family 
and  the  name  he  bears. 

Mr.  Sidney  Lowe  was  of  this  kind  to  Milltown.  No  one 
knew  exactly  what  he  had  done  that  was  more  disgraceful  than 
the  ordinary  silly  scrapes -of  youth;  and  it  may  be  presumed 
that  he  had  neither  robbed  a  church  nor  committed  a  murder. 
He  was  the  son  of  Colonel  Lowe,  of  Cragfoot,  who  had  mar- 
ried Lady  Anne  Graham's  daughter,  an  heiress  and  a  person- 
age ;  and  the  Lowes  had  always  been  among  the  first  people  \\ 
this  little  heaven  of  exclusiveness.  Nevertheless,  no  one  about 
Milltown  cared  to  be  much  with  him,  and  those  who  knew  him 
best  liked  him  least. 

Yet  he  was  handsome  and  clever — too  clever  by  half,  they 
said  in  the  town,  where  he  had  been  known,  man  and  boy, 
these  five  and  twenty  years,  and  never  any  good  known  of  him 
in  the  time  !  And  as  for  his  handsomeness,  there  were  those 
who  professed  not  to  see  so  very  much  in  him  when  all's  said 
and  done,  and  without  any  reference  to  the  old  proverb  which 
makes  handsome  is  that  handsome  does.  But  there  were  others 
who  said  that  he  was  well  to  look  at  if  bad  to  do  with — a  fine 
young  man,  if  a  scamp.  It  was  the  young  men  who,  for  the 
most  part,  held  his  good  looks  cheap,  and  the  women  who 
rated  them  high. 

He  was  one  of  the  light-weight  men,  about  five  feet  nine  in 
G 


98  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  ±>O,  LOVE?" 

height,  supple,  active,  well  proportioned  ;  with  good  points, 
such  as  small  hands  and  feet,  broad  shoulders,  narrow  hips, 
and  a  waist  that  would  have  matched  a  French  officer's.  He 
had  a  general  air  of  smartness  and  dressiness  about  him,  wore 
light  gloves,  perfect  boots,  and  clothes  of  noticeable  newness  ; 
and  he  always  buttoned  his  coats  tightly  about  him  when  they 
were  coats  with  waists  and  skirts,  as  they  generally  were,  by 
which  he  showed  off  his  points  and  magnified  himself  in  the 
eyes  of  the  Milltown  womanhood.  But  with  all  this  he  looked 
like  a  gentleman  and  not  like  a  snob.  In  features  he  was 
sharply  cut  and  darkly  coloured.  He  had  a  profusion  of  black 
hair  that  shone  like  silk  and  curled  in  multitudinous  little  rings 
over  his  head ;  a  broad,  low  forehead,  olive-tinted  ;  long,  arched 
brows  of  the  pencilled  kind  above  black  eyes  that  never  looked 
straight  at  men,  though,  to  make  amends,  they  had  the  habit 
of  staring  women  out  of  countenance.  His  mouth  was  rather 
wide,  thin  in  the  lips,  and  curved  in  the  lines;  his  chin  was 
sharply  pointed  ;  his  face  smooth-shaven,  excepting  for  his  well- 
waxed  moustaches  \  and  there  was  a  great  width  between  his 
ears. 

All  this  was  very  much  like  other  people,  and  bore  nothing 
on  the  surface  to  account  for  the  odd  kind  of  disesteem  which 
hung  about  his  name.  Grant  that  he  was  idle,  as  indeed  every 
one  must  allow,  yet  he  had  no  need  to  work.  When  his  father 
died  he  would  have  Cragfoot  and  his  mother's  fortune,  and 
come  in  for  everything.  Why  should  he  toil  through  the  best 
years  of  his  life,  heaping  pound  on  pound,  and  wearing  away 
his  youth  like  a  nobody  instead  of  enjoying  it  like  a  gentleman  ? 
As  he  was  the  only  one  to  ask  this  question,  he  was  the  only 
one  to  answer  it ;  and  the  answer  came,  as  might  be  expected, 
in  Mr.  Sydney  Lowe's  using  his  youth  according  to  his  plea- 
sure— sowing  many  bushels  of  those  disastrous  oats  which  make 
no  bread  for  a  man's  future.  His  father  had  but  little  influence 
over  him,  and.  what  he  had  went  the  wrong  way.  A  tyrant 
over  his  wife,  he  was  a  slave  to  his  son  ;  and  though  he  some- 
times affected  to  adopt  a  bullyiug  tone,  when  his  liver  was  out 
of  order  or  he  had  lost  an  unusually  large  sum  on  the  turf, 
Sydney  for  the  most  part;  carne  off  master  in  any  collision  that 
might  take  place  between  them. 

Colonel  Lowe  was  a  proud  man  with  a  high  temper  and  a 


OVER  THE  WINE  AND  WALNUTS.  99 

weak  will ;  selfish  in  his  nature  if  spendthrift  in  his  habits, 
and  unable  to  rise  above  his  desires.  Though  it  would  mani- 
festly have  been  the  proper  thing  for  Sydney  to  have  gone  to 
school,  if  only  to  complete  the  gentleman's  part  of  his  education, 
his  father  had  kept  him  close  to  his  side  ever  since  he  left  the 
nursery,  because  the  boy's  liveliness  amused  him  and  he  wanted 
a  companion.  He  had  only  a  taciturn  and  ailing  wife  to  whom 
to  speak  when  Sydney  was  away,  and  he  had  long  out-lived  his 
pleasure  in  that  association.  So  he  educated  his  son  at  home, 
and  prevented  his  making  a  career  for  himself,  that  he  might 
fill  the  place  of  filial  jester  at  Cragfoot,  that  he  might  boat  and 
hunt  and  shoot,  and  play  billiards  with  him  when  desired  ;  that 
is,  be  his  plaything  indoors  and  his  playfellow  abroad. 

As  time  went  on  ugly  rumours,  as  has  been  said,  began  to 
gather  round  the  young  man's  name.  Young,  idle,  fond  of 
pleasure,  and  loosely  held,  were  they  to  be  wondered  at,  with 
all  the  weight  of  Milltown  respectability  to  keep  him  straight  J 
Kind  friends  gave  the  Colonel  hints  as  to  what  was  said  and 
done  ;  but  the  Colonel  turned  a  deaf  ear  to  them  all.  Young 
men  would  be  young  men,  he  said,  and  he  would  rather  his  son 
was  a  natural,  high  spirited  young  fellow  who  did  kick  over  the 
traces  at  times,  provided  he  kicked  as  a  gentleman  should,  than 
be  one  of  those  mealy-mouthed  Joseph  Surfaces  who  are  as  bad 
as  their  brothers,  but  are  not  found  out  because  they  are  more 
cunning  and  hypocritical.  Whatever  then  he  knew  of  Sydney's 
husbandry  in  the  matter  of  those  wild  oats  with  which  he  was 
credited  he  kept  to  himself;  and  the  lad  had  never  been  cor- 
rected of  bad  habits  nor  educated  to  nobler  things  from  the 
time  when,  as  a  little  fellow,  he  killed  his  pet  rabbit  because  it 
would  not  learn  to  beg  like-  a  dog,  and  then  tried  to  hide 
what  he  had  done  by  , stealing  one  of  Tommy  Garth's  in  its 
stead. 

Of  one  thing  only  was  Colonel  Lowe  determined;  Sydney 
should  make  a  good  marriage.  No  one  knew  so  well  as  himself 
the  necessity  for  this ;  for  no  one  knew  so  well  as  himself  how 
much  of  his  wife's  fortune  had  gone  into  the  pockets  of  the 
bookmakers  at  Doncaster  and  Newmarket,  and  what  a  mere 
shell  Cragfoot  was  ;  and  in  his  own  mind  he  had  fixed  on  ol<k 
Lady  Mauley's  daughter,  Julia  Manley,  the  heiress  of  Water- 
field,  with  five  thousand  a  year  in  her  own  right,  and  the  grand 


100  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOtT  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

niece  of  a  duke.  To  be  sure,  poor  Julia  was  no  beauty.  She 
was  a  tall,  angular,  sandy-coloured  young  woman,  with  weak 
eyes  and  freckles,  very  good,  considered  clever,  and  decidedly 
silly;  but  five  thousand  a  year  to  a  young  man  mainly  occupied 
in  sowing  wild  oats  on  his  own  account,  and  whose  father  has 
been  a  godsend  to  the  bookmakers,  will  gild  even  weak  eyea 
and  freckles ;  and  as  Colonel  Lowe  used  to  say,  it  really  does 
not  signify  whom  you  marry !  After  a  couple  of  years  one 
woman  is  just  like  another  woman ;  but  the  five  thousand  a 
year  remains. 

On  the  evening  of  the  day  when  Sydney  had  met  the  young 
ladies  of  Abbey  Holme,  and  had  talked  so  much  French  to  dear 
Dora, 'Colonel  Lowe  and  his  son  sat  by  the  fire  after  dinner, 
sipping  their  claret  with  the  velvet  on  and  cracking  their  wal- 
nuts as  usual 

"  Who  was  that  tall  young  person  with  the  Hamley  girl  to- 
day ?"  asked  the  Colonel  suddenly. 

Sydney's  dark  eyes  went  down. 

"  That  niece  of  Mrs.  Hamley's,"  he  answered. 

"  That  niece  of  Mrs.  Hamley's  ?  —what  niece  ?  " 

"  I  dou't  know  exactly.  A  brother's  child,  I  believe,"  said 
Sydney,  with  indifference. 

"Which  brother?  There  were  two,  Robert  and  Reginald," 
the  Colonel  said. 

"  I  am  sure  I  don't  know.  The  old  fellows  were  before  my 
time.  You  must  know  more  about  them  than  I  possibly  can  ! " 
answered  Sydney,  concentrating  all  his  energies  on  peeling  his 
nut  without  a  break. 

The  truth  was,  both  father  and  son  knew  perfectly  well  who 
Patricia  was.  It  was  simply  their  mode  of  fencing. 

"That  Hamley  girl  has  some  good  points,"  said  the  Colonel, 
with  a  kind  of  contemptuous  admission,  as  if  he  had  been  speak- 
ing of  a  dog  or  a  cow  ;  for  he  too,  notoriously  gallant  to  ladies, 
was  by  no  means  respectful  to  women.  Sydney  still  looked  down 
intent  on  his  task,  and  this  time  made  no  answer.  "  She  wants 
style,  of  course,"  his  father  went  on  to  say.  "  It  is  a  good  pro- 
verb, if  a  coarse  one,  that  you  cannot  make  a  silk  purse  out  of  a 
sow's  ear  ;  and  the  Hamley  grain  is  not  silk.  Blood  will  out, 
my  boy,  whether  it  is  blue  or  brown  ;  and  that  Hamley  girl, 
if  a  pretty  thing  of  her  kind,  is  of  a  low  kind  all  the  same." 


OVER  THE  WINE  AND  WALNUTS.          101 

"  She  is  only  distantly  connected  with  Mr.  Hamley,"  said 
Sydney. 

He,  too,  hated  the  ear  which  was  not  silk ;  but  he  ignored  it 
in  Dora. 

"  Lucky  for  her.  I  confess  I  should  not  feel  very  desirous  of 
being  connected  with  a  man  who  once  held  my  horse  for  two- 
pence, though  he  is  now  the  owner  of  Abbey  Holme — worse 
luck  for  Milltown  I  Still  you  know,  Syd,  she  is  a  parvenue, 
make  the  best  of  it  you  will.  I  own,  not  so  bad  for  a  parvenue, 
and  might  be  made  something  of  if  well  handled.  I  doubt, 
though,  if  she  could  ever  be  really  refined — rubbed  up  beyond 
the  outside." 

"  She  is  well  bred  enough,"  said  Sydney,  seeing  that  his  father 
waited  as  if  for  an  answer. 

"  Is  she  1  I  know  so  little  of  her  I  She  is  long  in  getting  a 
husband  for  a  pretty  girl.  She  ought  to  be  looking  about  her 
now,  I  should  say — five  and  twenty  if  a  day  ! " 

"  No  ;  only  just  of  age,"  said  Sydney  hastily. 

The  Colonel  raised  his  eyebrows.  "  You  are  deep  in  a  lady's 
confidence,  Syd,  if  you  know  her  age  ! "  he  said,  with  a  satirical 
laugh. 

"  I  happened  to  know  this  by  chance,"  answered  Sydn'ey  with 
a  sulky  look. 

"  And  I  remember  when  she  came  to  Milltown  ten  years  ago  •„ 
and  she  was  fifteen  then,  I'll  swear.  Will  you  swear  to  your 
figures,  Syd  ?  Are  you  sure  you  have  not  been  hoodwinked  by 
a  year  or  two  ? " 

The  young  man  laughed  uneasily.  "  Well,  really  I  have  not 
made  Miss  Drummond's  exact  age  a  profound  study,"  he  said 
half  insolently.  "  Nor  do  I  offer  one,  two,  three,  or  four  and 
twenty  as  a  profession  of  faith.  I  said  what  I  thought ;  but, 
faith  !  I  may  be  wrong ;  and  it  is  of  no  great  consequence  either 
way." 

The  Colonel  looked  at  him,  a  smile  not  wholly  of  pleasure  on 
his  face.  "  Good,"  he  said ;  "  I  don't  want  you  to  get  too  intimate 
with  the  Abbey  Holme  people  at  any  time.  They  are  all  very 
well  to  be  on  civil  terms  with.  That  old  shoeblack  understands 
wine,  and  his  wife  gives  decent  dinners  ;  besides,  she  is  a  gen- 
tlewoman if  a  fallen  one.  But  we  don't  want  them  as  friends, 
you  know,  Syd — you  and  I — we  are  a  flight  too  high  for  that." 


102  "  WHAT  \VOTTLD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  Tt  is  difficult  to  keep  on  very  formal  terms  with  people  one 
meets  so  constantly  in  such  a  small  society  as  this,"  said  Sydney, 
throwing  a  fly. 

His  father  rose  to  it,  but  in  the  wrong  way. 

*  People  one  meets  so  constantly  1"  he  repeated  with  a  sur- 
prised intonation.  "  My  dear  boy,  you  must  be  dreaming. 
Where,  in  the  name  of  fortune,  do  we  meet  the  Hamleys  so 
constantly  1  Why,  they  are  just  beginning  to  be  noticed  in  the 
place,  and  are  yet  only  barely  tolerated.  You  cannot  call  half- 
a-dozen  dinners  in  the  year  meeting  constantly  I  And  the  old 
shoeblack  has  not  got  beyond  that — and  that's  too  far !  " 

"  No,  certainly ;  half-a-dozen  dinners  in  the  year  do  not  make 
a  great  intimacy,  as  you  say,"  returned  Sydney,  finishing  his 
wine  and  lounging  up  from  the  table  as  one  profoundly  unin- 
terested, not  to  say  wearied  of  the  subject.  "  Shall  you  be  long, 
dad  1 "  he  asked.  "I  am  off  to  smoke." 

"  Go,  if  you  like ;  I'll  follow,"  the  Colonel  answered  ;  and 
Sydney  went,  yawning  ostentatiously. 

When  he  had  closed  the  door,  his  father  said  to  himself,  as 
he  poured  out  another  glass  of  claret;  "  I  don't  like  his  manner. 
I'd  lay  my  life  there  is  something  in  the  wind  there.  How  he 
looked  when  I  spoke  of  her!  But  he  fenced  cleverly,  the  young 
dog — too  cleverly.  I  wish  he  had  been  franker,  and  so  had 
given  me  a  better  opening.  I'd  swear  I  heard  him  call  her  cherie 
when  they  passed  by  the  Slack  Lion,  and  did  not  see  me  in  the 
passage  ;  and  his  manner  said  as  much  as  her  face.  Hamley's 
cousin  for  my  son  ?  No,  not  if  she  brought  a  million  in  her 
skirt !  Hard  up  as  I  am  I'll  live  and  die  as  I  was  born ;  and  my 
son  shall  not  fall  below  me  with  my  consent ! " 

lie  sat  as  if  pondering  ft>r  a  few  minutes  ;  then  he  added, 
still  holding  solitary  counsel :  "  I  will  have  them  here,  and  then  I 
can  judge  for  myself.  After  all,  if  he  likes  the  girl  and  the  old 
ruffian  gives  her  a  good  dowry  ?  But  it  will  not  be  equal  to 
Julia  Manley's.  Only,  if  Syd  has  set  his  mind  on  her,  and  I  have 
no  good  excuse,  I  know  him  well  enough ;  he'll  marry  her  in  the 
teeth  of  everything,  and  then  there  will  be  the  devil  to  pay  !  " 

On  which  he  drank  yet  another  glass  of  claret ;  then  crossed 
the  hall  and  went  into  the  drawing-room. 

Mrs.  Lowe  was  lying  on  the  sofa,  comfortably  packed  up  and 
half  asleep. 


OVER  THE  WINE  AND   WALNUTS.  103 

"  My  dear ! "  said  her  husband  in  a  high  key. 

u  Yes,  Colonel ! "  she  answered  with  a  start. 

"  I  do  believe  you  were  asleep  again,  Matilda ! "  he  said 
tartly. 

"  Asleep  !  What  nonsense  !  when  you  know  I  never  sleep  1 " 
was  her  reply  made  peevishly. 

It  was  an  old  battle-ground  between  them,  and  the  weapons 
were  never  suffered  to  grow  rusty  by  disuse. 

"  I  think  we  will  have  a  dinner  party,  Matilda,"  said  the 
Colonel,  stirring  the  fire. 

"  A  dinner-party  1 "  she  echoed. 

"  Did  I  not  speak  plainly,  my  dear  ?  I  said  a  dinner-party  ; 
and  I  meant  a  dinner-party,"  returned  the  Colonel ;  the  accom- 
paniment of  falling  coals  lending  a  curiously  warlike  clang  to 
his  words. 

"  Yes,  Colonel,  certainly.  Who  are  they  to  be  ?"  said  Mrs. 
Lowe,  with  that  air  of  frightened  submission  which  always 
irritated  her  husband.  It  is  only  fair  to  her  to  say  that  an  air 
of  anything  else  would  have  irritated  him  just  as  much. 

"  Let  me  see.  Suppose  we  say  the  Rector  and  Mrs.  Borro- 
daile,  Fletcher  and  his  sister,  the  Collinsons,  Dr.  Wickham,  and 
the  Hamleys.  There's  a  new  girl  there  ;  Mrs.  Hamley's  niece 
— Reginald's  daughter  I  imagine  she  must  be — the  Captain 
never  married.  We'll  have  her  out,  and  see  what  she  is  like." 

Mrs.  Lowe  repeated  the  names.  "  That  makes  eleven,"  she 
said. 

"  Yes ;  fourteen  with  ourselves.  Seven  of  a  sort,"  said 
Colonel  Lowe.  "  Nobody  likely  to  take  anybody  else  by  the 
throat,  and  two  pretty  girls  as  the  enliveners  among  you  old 
women.  So  perhaps  you  will  write  the  notes  at  -once,  my 
dear  ;  and  John  can  take  them  round.  This  day  fortnight — 
January  3rd — unless  you  are  too  sleepy." 

"  How  fond  you  are  of  saying  disagreeable  things  ? "  said 
poor  Mrs.  Lowe  in  her  ill-used  tone,  as  she  slowly  unpacked 
herself  from  her  comfortable  nest  of  shawls  and  pillows  and 
went  shivering  and  tumbled  to  her  davenport. 

But  she  dared  not  remonstrate.  Colonel  Lowe  was  not  the 
man  to  sleep  on  a  project ;  and  when  he  began  to  stir  the  whole 
house  must  be  up  and  doing.  It  was  always  taking  time  by  the 
forelock  with  him  and  striking  while  the  iron  was  hot ;  and 


104  "WHAT  WOULD  VOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

his  thoughts  and  plans  were  full  grown  Minervas,  matured  at 
their  birth  and  never  needing  nursing.  So  the  notes  were 
written  and  tn*e  servant  sent  out  with  them  on  the  instant ;  for 
all  that  it  was  a  damp,  dark,  unpleasant  night  in  December, 
and  to-morrow  would  have  done  just  as  well.  But  to  men  like 
Colonel  Lowe  servants  are  only  animated  machines  who  have 
to  do  as  they  are  commanded,  and  who  are  not  allowed  the 
effeminacy  of  taking  cold  in  bad  weather  or  feeling  fatigue 
after  hard  work.  If  he  had  brought  nothing  else  with  him  out 
of  the  army  he  had  brought  the  habit  of  command  ;  and  there 
was  not  a  living  creature  about  Cragfoot  who  did  not  recognise 
the  master's  hand  when  he  raised  it — save  Sydney  ;  and  even 
with  him  there  were  conditions  and  barriers  he  could  not  pass  ; 
if  few,  yet  immovable.  And  one  of  these  was— he  must  marry 
money  or  he  must  accept  disinheritance. 


DILEMMAS. 


CHAPTER  XL 


invitation  to  Cragfoot  came  to  Abbey  Holme  just  as 
Dora  and  Mr.  Hamley  were  settling  to  their  evening 
bezique.  Mrs.  Hamley  "was  not  playing  to-night.  She 
was  deep  in  a  quarterly  article  on  the  latest  book  of  scandalous 
chronicles,  where  all  the  highly  spiced  bits  were  extracted 
fenced  about  by  an  editorial  padding  of  reprehension  ;  by 
which  means  was  accomplished  that  feat,  so  dear  to  English 
respectability,  of  enjoying  impropriety  under  the  pretext  of 
condemnation. 

"  An  invitation  to  Cragfoot !  "  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  with  a 
perceptible  sneer.  "  How  strangely  even  people  who  should  be 
well-bred  forget  themselves  !  '  As  if  Patricia  or  myself  could 
possibly  go  out  in  our  first  mourning  !  For  you  are  specially 
aske'd  too,  Patricia,  though  they  have  not  called  on  you  yet. 
Odd  manners  for  Lady  Graham's  daughter,  to  say  the  least  of  it !" 

"  I  do  not  want  people  to  call  on  me,  and  I  do  not  want  to 
go  out  to  dinner,"  said  Patricia  hastily. 

"  Don't  be  silly,"  returned  Mrs.  Hamley  sharply.  "  And 
don't  be  affected.  Of  course  you  will  have  to  go  out  like  any 
other  person  when  your  first  mourning  is  over.  I  hate  these 
pretences  of  being  unlike  other  people  ;  and  you  are  far  too 
fond,  Patricia,  of  posing  yourself  as  something  special  and 
peculiar,  and,  I  suppose,  something  better  than  any  one  else." 

"  I  did  not  mean  it  as  a  pretence  or  affectation,"  said 
Patricia. 

"  Yes,  you  did  ;  and  do  not  contradict,"  snapped  her  aunt. 
"  And  I  would  make  you  go  now,  only  it  would  be  absurd  in 
your  deep  crape.  And  she  ought  to  have  remembered  this, 
silly  little  woman  ?  That  eternal  catarrh  of  hers  seems  to  have 
really  softened  her  brain." 

Fortunately  for  Dora  the  name  of  Sydney  Lowe's  mother 
waa  not  mentioned. 


106  "WHAT  WOFLT)  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  What  is  all  the  row  about,  Lady  1 "  asked  Mr.  Hamley  in 
his  rolling,  unctuous  voice,  with  his  terminal  h's  and  odd  mix- 
ture of  pomposity  and  vulgarity. 

She  looked  at  him  with  cold  annoyance ;  when  she  was  dis- 
pleased, no  one  was  right  and  Mr.  Hamley  more  often  wrong 
than  another.  Then  after  a  pause  she  told  him— an  invitation 
on  the  third  to  Cragfoot,  for  all  of  them  ;  adding  "  Of  course 
we  cannot  accept," 

"  No  ? "  he  said,  dealing  his  cards  leisurely,  but  dealing 
three  instead  of  two.  "  Cannot  Dora  and  I  go  as  your  repre- 
sentatives 1 — unworthy  ones,  I  admit — but  just  to  carry  the  flag 
for  Abbey  Holme,  and  show  the  neighbours  we  are  alive  ?  " 

"  If  you  like  to  make  a  marked  division  in  the  house,  yes," 
said  Mrs.  Hamley  coldly. 

"  Not  to  annoy  you,  Lady,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  throwing 
away  his  b£zique  knave. 

"  No,  not  for  worlds,"  echoed  Dora,  who  had  been  warned 
by  a  touch  from  her  partner's  foot  that  she  was  to  "  follow  his 
lead,"  and  "  back  him  up." 

"  I  really  do  not  care  a  snuff-about  it.  It  was  only  for  the 
credit  of  the  house,"  said  Mr.  Hamley.  '  Royal  marriage; 
Dora,  forty." 

"  And  I  am  sure  I  do  not,  dear,"  said  Dora,  looking  at  Mrs. 
Hamley  sweetly.  "  It  is  awfully  cold  too,  turning  out  at 
night  to  drive  a  full  mile  ! "  shrugging  her  shoulders  with  a 
shiver. 

"  To  drive  a  full  mile  ! "  echoed  Mrs.  Hamley  crossly  ;  none 
of  these  well-bred  people  had  learnt  the  little  politeness  of  not 
repeating  foregone  phrases.  "  And  what  of  that  ?  When  we 
were  girls  we  thought  nothing  of  walking  to  Cragfoot  in  Lady 
Graham's  time.  I  don't  know  what  the  girls  of  the  present 
day  are  coming  to  with  their  indolence  and  inability  to  exert 
themselves.  And  you  are  as  bad,  Dora,  as  any  of  them." 

Patricia  looked  and  listened  with  her  big  eyes  wide  open, 
and  her  astonishment  at  this  new  view  of  her  aunt's  visible  on 
her  face.  Remembering  the  frequent  lectures  which  her  own 
unladylike  vigour  had  drawn  down  on  her  head,  how  her 
strength  and  hardihood  had  been  counted  to  her  as  sins,  she 
wondered  where  the  right  line  Avas  drawn  and  what  was  the 
exact  amount  of  energy  allowed  before  it  became  vulgarity,  and 


DILEMMAS.  107 

where  ladylike  delicacy  ended  and  reprehensible  self-indulgence 
began. 

"  But  Dora  is  too  delicate  to  walk  out  at  night !  "  she  said 
in  eager  apology.  "  She  would  catch  cold  with  the  night  air. 
Why  !  she  does  not  go  out  enough  in  the  daytime  even  ! " 

"  My  dear  niece,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  in  her  most  freezing 
tones,  and  with  her  most  elaborate  politeness,  "  oblige  me  by 
not  interfering  in  matters  which  do  not  concern  you.  Miss 
Drummond  and  I  can  settle  the  business  between  us  without 
your  assistance.  Now,  Dora,  if  you  will  give  me  a  moment's 
attention — that  is,  if  you  can  abstract  yourself  from  your 
ridiculous  game — perhaps  you  will  have  the  kindness  to  say 
whether  you  wish  to  go  to  this  dinner  or  not  1 " 

Again  Mr.  Hamley  tone' ied  her  foot. 

"  I  wish  to  do  just  as  you  and  Mr.  Hamley  like,  dear,"  said 
Dora  cheerfully. 

"  That  is  no  answer  ;  yes  or  no,  if  you  please." 

"  If  Mr.  Hamley  likes  to  go" — she  hesitated  with  an  appeal- 
ing look.  Mr..  Hamley  still  making  signs  under  the  table,  kept 
his  eyes  on  his  cards,  taking  no  part  in  the  discussion. 

"  Mr.  Hamley  can  answer  for  himself,"  said  his  wife,  com- 
pressing her  lips.  "  We  will  come  to  Mr.  Hamley  by-and  by. 
I  have  only  to  deal  with  you  at  this  present  moment.  Do  you 
wish  to  go  to  Onigfoot  to  dine  on  this  day  fortnight,  or  do  you 
not  1  Quick,  if  you  please- ;  the  messenger  is  waiting." 

"  If  you  were  going,  dear,  I  should  like  it,"  stammered  Dora. 

"  But  I  am  not  going,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley ;  and  paused  for 
a  decision. 

"  I  think  I  would  like  it,  then,"  said  Dora  with  her  eyes 
down,  knowing  too  well  that  the  authorities  whom  she  made 
it  the  business  of  her  life  to  conciliate  equally  were  in  opposi- 
tion, and  that  she  must  offend  one  whic'h  way  soever  she  took. 
In  general,  like  a  wise  girl  who  knows  where  the  staying  power 
as  well  as  the  real  influence  lies,  she  sided  with  the  wife  ;  but 
the  temptation  in  this  case  was  more  than  she  could  resist  ; 
and  an  evening  spent  at  Sydney's  home,  with  the  opportunity 
of  making  herself  charming  to  his  father  and  mother,  was 
worth  a  few  days  of  Mrs.  Hamley's  ice-bound  manner,  in  her 
rapid  esthnate  of  values.  Besides,  there  was  Mr.  Hamley's 
heavy  foot  under  the  table,  and  she  knew  what  that  meant  too. 


108  "  WIT  AT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  You  shall  have  your  wish,"  said  Mrs.  Haroley  stiffly.  J<  I 
have  no  desire  to  impose  my  sad  mourning  on  you  or  Mr.  Ham- 
ley.  The  sympathy  which  is  not  given  freely  from  the  heart  is 
of  no  value  in  my  eyes  ;  and  I  am  glad  you  have  decided  as  you 
have  done  with  such  unmistakable  candour.  Truth  is  always 
valuable,  even  if  unflattering." 

Dora  reddened,  but  said  nothing.  Mr.  Hamley  went  on 
quietly  with  his  game,  but  took  care  to  score  in  silence,  not 
calling  out  his  declarations.  They  knew  their  world  and  what 
was  their  best  wisdom. 

But  Patricia,  who  was  only  honest  and  who  knew  nothing 
but  what  she  saw,  cried  out  in  real  pain  :  "  Oh,  aunt,  you 
misjudge  her  !  Dora  does  care  for  you ;  does  sympathise  with 
you  !  She  said  herself  to  me  that  she  felt  like  the  daughter  of 
you  both ! " 

Mr.  Hamley's  eyes  gleamed  viciously  at  this,  now  at  Dora, 
now  at  Patricia.  Dora  looked  inexplicably  confused.  Mrs. 
Hamley  took  no  notice.  She  merely  half  shut  her  eyes,  which 
made  them  look  something  like  a  cat's,  and  after  much  unne- 
cessary trial  of  pens  and  paper  wrote  a  long  and  elaborately- 
worded  note  of  explanation  and  regret  for  her  own  part  and  for 
that  of  her  niece,  for  the  necessity  they  were  under,  owing  to 
their  recent  bereavement,  of  declining,  but  ending  with  the  plea- 
sure which  Mr.  Hamley  and  Miss  Drummohd  had  in  accepting 
Colonel  and  Mrs.  Lowe's  polite  invitation  for  Thursday,  the  3rd 
of  January.  This  she  folded,  directed,  sealed — Mrs.  Hamley 
did  not  patronise  stamped  and  gummed  envelopes ;  and  on  the 
instant  Patricia,  who  had  been  watching  her,  rang  the  bell  un- 
bidden. 

"  My  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  still  with  her  eyes  half  shut, 
showing  just  a  line  of  cold  glitter  between  the  lids,  "  may  1  ask 
you  never  to  do  that  again  ]  I  allow  no  one  to  ring  the  bell 
in  my  presence  uninvited." 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  aunt ;  but  I  thought  it  would  save  time," 
said  Patricia.  "  It  was  getting  so  late  for  the  poor  messenger, 
whoever  he  is." 

And  you  are  this  messenger's  care-taker  1  1  thank  you  for 
your  lesson  in  humanity,  though  I  was  not  aware  I  needed  it. 
I  have  generally  had  the  character  of  extreme  consideration 
for  others ;  but  it  seems  we  older  people  know  nothing,  and 


DILEMMAS.  10$ 

you  young  ones  have  exclusive  possession  of  the  wisdom  and 
virtue  of  the  world." 

Patricia  rose  and  went  over  to  her.  She  put  her  young,  sup- 
ple arras  about  the  angular  and  well-girt  body  of  her  aunt,  and 
laid  her  fresh  face  against  the  withered  cheek  efflorescent  with 
its  Bloom  of  Ninon. 

"  Dear  aunt,"  she  said  tenderly,' "  have  patience  with  me !  I 
want  only  to  please  you,  and  do  what  is  right ;  but  I  know  that 
I  blunder  more  often  than  I  succeed.  I  have  been  brought  up 
so  differently  from  your  ways  that  I  cannot  help  offending  you. 
But  indeed  I  do  not  want  to  vex  you.  You  believe  that,  do 
you  not,  my  dear  ? " 

Her  grey  eyes  were  full  «f  honest  pleading  and  tender  wishes 
as  they  looked  with  pathetic  yearning  into  the  hard  face  that 
turned  itself  away  from  her  caress. 

"  Yes,  yes,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  irritably.  She  hated  anything 
like  a  scene;  and  to  have  her  moods  noticed,  save  by  tacit  sub- 
mission to  the  course  they  indicated,  was  an  offwice  she  found 
it  hard  to  forgive.  "  I  daresay  you  will  improve  in  time,  child ; 
but  I  must  confess  you  are  very  trying  now ;  and  my  poor  bro- 
ther lamentably  failed  in  his  duty  to  you.  There,  that  will 
do  !  Don't  you  see  you  are  crushing  my  fichu  ?  And,  good 
gracious,  Patricia,  what  a  mess  you  have  made  of  my  cap ! " 

On  which  she  pushed  her  away  angrily ;  and  Patricia  felt 
herself  in  deeper  disgrace  than  before. 

When  they  went  to  bed  that  night,  Dora  stole  quietly  into 
Patricia's  room.  She  found  her  sitting  half  undressed,  by  the 
uncurtained  window,  looking  at  the  starry  sky — so  much  of  it, 
at  least,  as  she  could  see  between  the  top  of  the  wall  and  the 
roof  of  her  window.  She  was  not  crying,  as  another  girl  might, 
but  just  wearying  her  heart  out  to  know  what  it  all  meant. 
She  felt  in  a  maze  to  which  she  had  not  the  clue,  and  where 
every  path  was  wrong,  every  trial  abortive.  She  could  under- 
stand nothing  ;  neither  why  she  had  offended  her  aunt  because 
she  had  spoken  the  truth,  defended  Dora,  and  thought  for  the 
poor  messenger — all  of  which  were  simple  duties  ;  nor  did  she 
know  why  there  should  have  been  such  a  bitter  under  current 
about  such  a  simple  thing  as  a  dinner-party ;  nor  why  Dora — 
dear  Dora,  whom  she  so  much  loved — was  so  reluctant  to  say 
what  she  wished.  And  then  why  she  had  been  told  to  hold  her 


110  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO.  LOVE  ?  " 

tongue  about  the  young  man  they  had  met  to-day  ?  And  who 
was  he  1  As  only  "  Cragfoot  "  had  been  mentioned  downstairs 
when  this  mysterious  dinner  was  discussed,  and  as  Patricia 
had  not  .the  smallest  idea  who  lived  there,  the  name  had  told 
her  nothing.  Had  she  heard  of  Colonel  or  Mrs.  Lowe,  the 
chances  are  she  would  havemade  some  kind  of  exclamation  which 
would  have  caused  a  considerable  draft  on  Dora's  inventive 
faculties  and  have  necessitated  a  profuse  coinage  of  her  cur- 
rent change — white  lies.  As  it  was,  it  was  all  a  mystery ; 
and  Patricia's  whole  nature  abhorred  mysteries. 

This  initiation  of  hers  into  a  certain  phase  of  life,  unhappily 
only  too  common,  was  as  painful  as  physical  suffering;  and  the 
confusion  it  was  beginning  to  create  in  her  mind  was  working 
infinite  sorrow,  and  might  in  time — who  knows? — work  as 
infinite  mischief.  For  the  most  honest  nature  in  the  world, 
the  most  pure  and  crystalline,  if  humble,  loving,  and  loyal,  may 
be  warped  to  doubt  by  the  very  virtues  that  are  its  charm.  Pa- 
tricia knew  what  she  had  been  taught  in  the  early  days  of  her 
life,  and  her  lessons  and  their  teacher  were  dear  ;  but  how  could 
she  maintain  her  honesty,  her  candour,  her  sincerity,  in  a 
household  where  these  qualities  were  not  only  unpopular  but 
condemned  as  sins? — a  household,  too,  so  far  superior  to  herself 
in  training  and  wisdom.  Was  she  really  the  only  one  right  and 
all  the  rest  wrong?  Or  w;-s  there  another  virtue  beside  those 
which  she  had  been  taught,  and  which  must  at  times  be  su- 
preme— the  virtue  of  seeing  wrong-doing  without  remonstance, 
consenting  with  sinners,  and  sliding  down  the  incline  with  her 
superiors?  Humility  or  truth  ?  Obedience  or  sincerity  ?  She 
knew  what  she  would  have  said  at  Barsands,  and  what  her 
uncle,  would  have  taught  her  there ;  but  things  which  were 
clear  then  were  confused  now,  and  she  seemed  to  know  less  as 
she  learnt  more. 

Sitting  there,  with  her  rich  brown  hair  falling  over  her  bare 
shoulders,  and  her  eyes  fixed  on  the'stars  with  a  childish  yearn- 
ing for  her  uncle's  spirit  entangled  somewhere  among  them  to 
come  down  to  her  this  night  and  tell  her  what  she  ought  to  do, 
she  heard  her  door  softly  opened,  and  Dora,  in  a  dainty  wrap- 
per of  blue  and  white  and  lace  and  ribbon,  supplemented  with 
an  ermine  cape — for  she  knew  the  temperature  of  Patricia's 
fireless  room — came  gliding  in.  Her  hair  too  was  about  her 


Ill 

neck,  very  picturesque  and  pretty.  But  what  a  small  amount 
it  took  to  build  up  that  magnificent  structure  of  braided  coils  ! 
thought  Patricia.  Her  own  great  heavy  masses  which  were 
three  times  as  thick  and  loug  as  Dora's  could  not  be  made  to 
do  half  the  work. 

Coming  up  to  her  in  her  graceful,  gliding  way,  Dora  said 
softly : 

"Dear  thing,  I  want  to  "help  you." 

Patricia's  arms  were  round  her  in  a  moment,  and  the  light  of 
her  love  brjghtened  her  eyes  to  their  old  radiance. 

"  You  are  my  good  angel,"  she  said  enthusiastically.  "  I  do 
not  think  I  could  go  on  living  here  without  you,  Dora  !" 

"  But  you  really  must  let  me  teach  you  how  to  live  here 
peaceably  and  happily,  with  me  or  without  me,"  said  Dora ; 
and  then  began  her  lisping  lecture  on  the  propriety  of  abso- 
lute silence  and  submission  to  all  Mrs.  Hamley's  words  and 
ways.  There  was  no  good  in  opposing  her,  she  said.  Mrs. 
Hamley,  dear  tiling,  was  mistress,  and  would  always  be  mis- 
tress to  the  end  of  her  life  ;  and  not  one  of  them,  from  Mr. 
JtJamley  downward,  dare  contradict  her  or  hold  their  own 
against  her. 

"Remember,"  she  gave  as  her  last  exordium,  "never  defend 
yourself  or  any  one  else,  however  unjust  she  may  be.  It  is  only 
a  mood,  and  will  pass  if  you  do  not  notice  it ;  for  she  is  really 
a  kind-hearted  woman  at  bottom,  though  such  a  difficult  tem- 
per to  deal  with.  Never  take  anything  on  yourself  without  her 
express  permission,  if  it  is  only  the  pulling  down  of  a  blind,  or 
the  suggesting  more  coals  on  the  fire.  You  may  very  likely  be 
scolded  for  not  pulling  down  the  blind  if  the  sun  comes  into 
the  room,  and  for  not  putting  more  coals  on  the  fire  if  it  goes 
out  or  gets  too  low,  but  if  you  are  you  must  just  take  it  quietly, 
and  pretend  that  you  were  to  blame.  If  you  do  things  x>f  your 
own  accord,  you  are  sure  to  catch  it ;  and  it  only  fidgets  her  to 
see  any  one  move  without  her  permission.  So,  why  do  it  t  If 
she  says  black  is  white,  good  gracious,  say  it  is  white  too  ! 
What  does  it  signify  ?  If  you  say  no,  it  is  black,  you  make  her 
angry  and  have  a  row  ;  and  where  is  the  good  of  that  ?  In  fact, 
you  must  just  efface  yourself,  dear  ;  and  whatever  you  think 
say  nothing,  but  make  your  mind  apparently  the  shadow  u* 
hers." 


112  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOTT  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  Dora !  "  cried  Patricia  with  unfeigned  horror.  "  Such  a 
life  as  that  1  I  would  not  lead  it  if  1  had  to  die !  I  will  do  all  I 
can  to  study  and  please  my  aunt — it  is  my  duty — but  I  will  not 
listen  to  her  injustice  when  she  is  unjust  without  protesting  : 
and  I  will  never  say  what  is  not  true  for  her  pleasure." 

"  Then  you  will  never  get  on  at  Abbey  Holme,"  said  Dora, 

"  No  I  hope  I  never  shall,  if  this  is  the  only  way  in  which  I 
can,"  answered  Patricia  stoutly.  The  doctrine  of  sham  and  un- 
truth, brought  nakedly  before  her,  broke  through  the  cobweb 
meshes  of  her  doubts  and  set  her  soul  clear  and  free,.  "I  would 
rather  that  my  aunt  disliked  me  even  more  Ehan  she  does,  than 
that  I  should  despise  myself." 

"  Why  can't  you  leave  yourself  alone  ? "  asked  Dora,  uncon- 
sciously touching  one  of  the  deepest  problems  of  spiritual  life. 
"  Do  what  you  ought  to  do — what  it  is  only  wise  to  do — and 
never  mind  whether  it  makes  you  despise  yourself  or  not.  We 
have  to  live  for  others,  not  for  ourselves." 

"  And  we  have  to  live  to  God  and  Truth  before  all,"  said  Pa- 
tricia, looking  up. 

The  fair  face  heroically  suppressed  a  smile.  Patricia  was  so 
funny  !  She  might  be  a  Methodist  parson  talking  like  that  j 
and  to  another  girl  too  !  No  kudos  even  to  be  got  by  it ! 

"  Well,  you  must  do  as  you  think  best,  of  course  ;  say  all  you 
think  and  make  Mrs.  Hamley  very  angry,  and  yourself  most 
horribly  uncomfortable ;  but  I  hope  you  will  not  quarrel  with 
me  dear,  because  I  am  a  cowardly  little  thing  and  care  only  to 
keep  peace,"  Dora  said  coaxingly. 

"I  Dora?  »In  the  first  place,  I  never  quarrel  with  any  ona 
I  don't  think  I  ever  had  a  quarrel  in  my  life,  not  even  with 
Miss  Pritchard,  whom  I  did  not  like ;  and  least  of  all  could  I 
with  you  !  Dear,  clever,  gentle,  good  Dora !  I  think  you  are 
an  angel !  Why,  I  offended  my  aunt  to  night  because  I  could 
not  bear  to  hear  her  so  unjust  to  you — you,  of  all  people  !  " 

"  Which  you  need  not  have  done,"  said  Dora  a  little  coolly. 
"  I  am  used  to  that  kind  of  thing  from  her  and  do  not  mind  it. 
Hard  words  break  no  bones,"  she  said  lightly ;  "  and  your  little 
brush  made  it  only  all  the  worse  for  me." 

"  What  an  unlucky  girl  I  am  ! "  sighed  Patricia. 

"No,  you  are  not  a  bit  unlucky,  but  you  are  very  self-willed/' 
said  Dora,  with  an  admirable  appearance  of  not  knowing  that 


DILEMMAS.  113 

she  was  saying  anything  that  would  offend  the  most  susceptible. 

"No!  no  I  don't  call  me  that,  Dora  !  I  am  only  trying  to 
live  as  1  have  been  taught,"  cried  Patricia,  really  pained. 

"  You  may  call  it  what  you  like  ;  I  call  it  self-will.  When 
you  are  advised  again  and  again,  as  I  have  advised  you,  how  to 
conduct  yourself  here  for  everybody's  peace,  and  you  will  make 
yourself  and  every  one  else  miserable  by  going  your  own  way, 
what  is  that  but  self-will,  I  should  like  to  know  1  At  all  events, 
if  you  determine  to  follow  out  your  high  and  mighty  line  of 
conscience  and  righteousness,"  with  a  little  grimace,  "  you  must 
expect  to  suffer.  Martyrdom  may  not  be  pleasant,  but  it  is 
what  you  go  in  for;  BO  you  musi  accept  it  patiently,  remember 
that ! " 

"  I  try  to  be  patient  in  every  way,"  said  Patricia,  looking  at 
her  with  an  agitated  face. 

"  Yes,  it  is  all  very  well  for  you  to  say  that  you  try  to  be 
this,  and  try  to  be  that,  but  it  is  we  who  suffer,"  said  Dora, 
shrugging  her  shoulders.  "  You  make  us  all — Mr.  Hamley, 
poor  dear  Mrs.  Hamley,  and  poor  dear  me  too — as  wretched  as 
yourself,  simply  because  you  will  not  have  a  little  common-sense 
and  less  egotism.  But  now  I  shall  say  no  more.  I  have  said 
all  I  want  to  say,  and  all  you  are  to  remember ;  but  please, 
dear,"  passing  the  tips  of  her  fingers  playfully  down  the  girl's 
upturned  face  as  she  stood  beside  her  preparing  to  go,  while 
Patricia  still  sat  by  the  window  listening  to  her,  "  do  remember 
it.  And  now,  good  night."  She  stooped  her  pretty  little  fresh 
face  and  kissed  her  affectionately.  '*  You  old  goosie  I  "  she  said, 
as  Patricia  gave  her  a  great  hug  and  called  her  a  darling ;  and 
laughing,  glided  to  the  door.  "  Oh  ! "  she  then  said  quite  in- 
differently, just  as  her  hand  was  on  the  lock,  turning  back  and 
speaking,  in  the  tone  of  a  person  who  has  been  struck  by  a  sud- 
den thought;  "if  a  note  comes  for  you  to-morrow  morning, 
dear,  will  you  give  it  unopened  to  me  1 " 

"  A  note  for  me  to  be  given  to  you  t "  said  Patricia,  in  her 
w«ll-known  tone  of  frank  amazement. 

Dora's  fair  face  flushed  with  annoyance. 

"  She  is  positively  maddening ! "  she  said  to  herself. 
"Please,  dear,"  aloud,  quite  tranquilly. 

"  But  why  should  it  come  to  me,  and  not  to  you  direct," 
asked  Patricia,  looking  at  her  with  her  bewildered  look. 
H 


114  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  T)O    LOVE?" 

Dora  glided  back  to  her  old  place  by  the  uncurtained  win- 
dow. 

"  Now  don't  ask  me  any  questions,  there's  a  dear,"  she  said 
caressingly.  "  It  is  just  my  little  secret,  and  of  no  consequence 
to  any  one  but  myself.  You  will  get  me  into  dreadf'ultrouble 
if  you  do  not  help  me ;  that  is  all  I  can  tell  you  ;  and  you  will 
*do  no  one  any  harm  if  you  do.  But  you  will  help  me,  will  you 
not,  darling?  "  She  laid  her  small  hand  on  the  girl's  shoulder, 
and  looked  down  into  the  noble,  troubled  face  pleadingly. 

"  I  do  nut  mind,  of  'Course,  giving  you  a  note  that  does  not 
belong  to  me  though  it  may  be  addressed  to  me,"  said  Patricia, 
distressed,  disturbed,  uncertain.  "But  if  Mr.  Hamley  or  my 
aunt  sees  it,  and  asks  who  is  my  correspondent,  what  am  I  to 
say?  You  see  I  have  no  letters  ;  and  there  is  no  one  to  write 
to  me  excepting  Gordon  ;  and  I  cannot  hear  from  him  yet  for 
two  mouths  or  more.  So  they  will  be  sure  to  ask  ;  and  then 
what  can  I  say  ? " 

"  Say  1  Anything !  That  it  is  from  Miss  Biggs,  the  dress- 
maker." 

"  I  cannot  do  that,"  Patricia  answered  gravely.  "  I  have 
never  told  a  falsehood  in  my  life,  and  even  for  you,  Dora,  much 
as  I  love  you  and  much  as  I  would  do  for  you,  I  cannot  begin 
now  1 " 

"  And  how  do  you  expect  to  get  through  the  world,  if  you 
will  not  help  a  friend  with  a  harmless  little  white  lie  like  this?" 
said  Dora,  indignantly.  "And  you,  who  make  so  much  fuss  about 
your  loving  people  so  much,  and  your  loyalty  to  them  !  It  is 
perfect  nonsense,  Patricia,  setting  yourself  up  as  so  much  better 
than  any  one  else,  and  pretending  that  you  are  too  good  to  do 
the  things  we  all  have  to  do  ! " 

"  Don't  be  angry,  Dora,"  said  Patricia  humbly.  "  There  are 
very  few  things  that  I  feel  sure  of  now — fewer,  a  great  deal, 
than  I  did  three  months  ago  ! — but  this  I  do  know,  that  it  is 
mean  and  cowardly  to  tell  falsehoods  for  any  purpose  whatever. 
Even  if  I  ought  to  hold  my  tongue,  as  you  say  I  should,  and  let 
people  think  I  agree  with  them  when  I  do  not,  I  am  sure  I 
ought  not  to  say  what  is  not  true." 

"  Then  you  will  betray  me  ? — for  the  note  will  come  ! "  said 
Dora,  very  pale. 

"  No,  I  will  not  betray  you,  Dora.     I  could  not  do  that  at 


DILEMMAS.  115 

any  cost.  But  neither  will  I  tell  a  falsehood  to  screen  you,  if 
there  is  anything  you  do  not  want  known." 

"  Well,  leave  it  to  me,  you  tiresome  girl !  "  said  Dora  after  a 
moment's  pause,  and  speaking  more  ill-temperedly  than  Patricia 
had  imagined  sheycould  speak.  "I  shall  know  better  than  to 
trust  to  your  friendship  for  me  another  time  ;  but  as  I  did  trust 
you  this  time  you  must  not  tell  of  me,  and  I  will  do  the  best  I 
can..  You  have  promised  you  will  not  betray  me  ?  "  earnestly. 

"  I  will  not,"  the  girl  answered,  as  if  she  had  been  taking  an 
oath. 

"  Then  I  will  trust  to  my  own  brains  for  the  rest,?  laughed 
Dora  ;  her  good-humour  returned  with  the  scheme  that  had 
occurred  to  her,  and,  nodding  to  Patricia  gaily,  she  slid  out  of 
the  room  and  nearly  ran  against  Bignold  as  she  was  leaving 
Mrs.  Hamley  for  the  night.  If  she  had,  that  virtuous  female 
would  have  told  of  her  next  day,  and  Aunt  Hamley  would  have 
administered  a  lecture  on  collusion  which  would  have  had  more 
words  in  it  than  meaning. 

This  night  it  was,  when,  safely  locked  in  her  own  room, 
Dora  indemnified  herself  for  the  suppressions  and  vexations  of 
the  day  by  crying  a  little  when  she  got  to  bed,  and  saying  half 
aloud,  shaken  with  fear  and  repentance,  "  How  I  wish  I  had 
refused  and  never  done  it !  It  was  too  bad  of  him  to  make 
me,  when  he  knew  what  was  at  stake  1 " 


11  (  UWHAT  worr.n  vor  DO,  LOVE?' 


CHAPTER  XII. 
HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND. 

•a 

f°r  me>  one  *°  y°u»  Lady;  none  for  you,  Dora; 
and  one  for  you,  Patricia;"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  dealing 
out  the  letters  like  cards  the  next  morning  at  break- 
fast. 

Patricia  crimsoned  with  undisguised  embarrassment  as  sh( 
received  a  letter  written  in  a  strange  hand — a  man's  hand — 
with  the  Icsal  postscript  on  the  cover.  She  said  nothing,  but 
quietly  laid  it  beside  her  plate  and  began  to  eat  her  breakfast. 

Her  aunt  looked  at  her  sharply.  It  seemed  strange  to  her, 
first,  that  Patricia  should  have  a  letter  at  all ;  next,  that  she 
should  be  so  indifferent  about  reading  it  as  not  to  open  it,  as 
any  one  else  would  have  done ;  or  if  not  indifferent,  then  so 
much  the  reverse  as  not  to  be  able  to  look  at  it  before  other 
people.  Who  could  be  her  correspondent  ?  There  was  some- 
thing here  defying  and  mysterious;  and  Mrs.  Hamley  never  for- 
gave either  independence  or  mystery.  People  of  arbitrary  wills, 
and  with  a  disposition  to  herd  souls  like  sheep,  seldom  do. 

This  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  she  liked  dear  Dora  so  much. 
She  used  to  say,  when  speaking  of  that  young  person  as  she 
often  did,  and  giving  a  reason  for  the  faith  that  was  in  her,  that 
dear  Dora  had  not  had  a  secret  from  her  since  she  came  under 
her.  roof  ;  and  had  never  been  ashamed  to  give  her  the  most 
minute  and  circumstantial  account  of  every  event  in  her  inno- 
cent life.  It  was  as  good  as  being  on  the  spot  herself,  Mrs. 
Hamley  said,  when  Dora  had  been  away  for  a  day  or  two  and 
came  iiome  with  her  budget.  When  she  went  to  London  last 
October,  for  instance,  and  stayed  there  for  a  week  with  the 
Borrodailes — Mrs.  Hamley  not  being  able  to  accompany  her, 
owing  to  what  she  called  a  chilblain  and  her  doctor  gout — her 
sprightly  reminiscences  were  really  amusement  enough  for 
weeks.  She  had  kept  a  diary,  dear  child,  on  purpose  to  please 
them  ;  and  the  care  she  had  taken  to  put  down  everything  she 


HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND.  117 

had  seen  and  every  place  she  had  visited  was  beyond  praise 
both  for  its  cleverness  and  frankness.  There  was  not  an  hour 
of  her  time  that  she  could  not  account  for;  and  how  delightful 
it  was  to  have  to  do  with  a  person  so  thoroughly  candid  arid 
trustworthy  I  She  had  no  secrets  indeed ! — except,  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley  might  have  added,  when  she  herself  wished  to  conceal  any- 
thing from  her  husband  ;  and  then  how  clever  and  discreet  and 
full  of  nice  helpful  tact  the  girl  was !  And  so  said  Mr.  Ham  ley 
on  his  own  side  when  he  had  it  in  hand  to  hoodwink  the  Lady, 
and  dear  Dora  was  his  confederate.  But  as  they  never  came  to 
the  comparison  of  notes  they  never  found  that  the  tact  each 
thought  consecrated  to  him  or  her  only  was  common  to  both, 
and  so  went  on  accepting  as  special  and  private  a  quality  which 
was  serviceable  for  more  purposes  than  their  own. 

If,  however,  this  strange  noisy  girl  was  going  to  add  to  her 
natural  misdemeanours  the  acquired  sin  of  making  mysteries 
and  having  secrets,  Mrs.  Hamley  felt  that  her  cup  would  then 
indeed  be  too  full ;  and  that  this  would  be  just  the  one  drop  of 
overflowing  bitterness  which  she  could  not  and  would  not 
accept. 

"  Are  you  not  going  to  read  your  letter,  Patricia  1 "  sha 
asked  tartly. 

"  No,  not  yet,  aunt,"  replied  Patricia,  not  looking  up. 

"  Who  is  your  correspondent,  pray  1 " 

"  I  do  not  know,  aunt." 

0  You   do  not  know  I     A  young  lady,  my  niece,  receive 
letter  and  not  know  from  whom,  and  not  open  it  to  pee  ?  What 
an  extraordinary  thing  . — not  quite  according  to  my  ideas  of 
the  natural  action  of  well-bred  girls,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  very 
slowly,  very  deliberately. 

"  I  dare  say  it's  from  the  dressmaker,"  said  Dora,  coming  to 
the  rescue  in  her  sweet  peace-making  way.  "  Give  it  to  me 
Patricia,  if  you  are  afraid  to  open  it  dear." 

Patricia,  not  looking  up  from  her  plate,  flung  the  letter 
across  the  table  with  a  shy  and  awkward  jerk,  while  Dora 
gazed  at  her  with  a  reassuring  smile  and  candid  eyes.  The 
one  looked  guilty  and  ashamed,  the  other  showed  a  fine,  snow- 
white,  well-ventilated  conscience  which  had  no  dark  corners  to 
hide. 

"  Yes,  it  is,"  she  said,  as  she  opened  the  note  down  in  her 


118  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

lap  and  showed  a  printed  circular — as  the  contents.  "  '  Miss 
Biggs  lias  the  honour  to  announce  to  her  kind  patrons,  the  No- 
bility and  Gentry  of  Milltown,'  &c.  &c.  I  thought  1  knew  the 
Biggs  style  of  doing  business,"  laughed  the  girl,  with  a  pretty 
triumph  at  the  difficulty  being  so  happily  ended.  "  Did  I  not 
tell  you,  Patricia,  that  you  would  be  sure  to  have  a  notice,  all 
to  yourself,  as  soon  as  our  local  Madame  Elise  found  you  out  ?" 
she  added. 

"  What  an  incomprehensible  girl  you  are,  Patricia !  and  what 
mountains  you  contrive  to  make  out  of  molehills ! "  said  Mrs. 
Hamley  with  displeasure  ;  Mr.  Hamley  adding,  as  the  mascu- 
line view  of  the  subject ;  "  My  dear  young  lady,  never  throw 
away  your  powder  and  shot  on  trifles.  When  you  have  any- 
thing that  you  wish  to  conceal  from  Mrs.  Hamley  and  myself, 
conceal  it — if  you  can  ;  but  for  goodness  gracious  sake  don't 
begin  a  game  of  '  I  spy  I '  with  nothing  to  run  for  !  " 

"  I  was  not  playing  any  game  and  I  had  nothing  to  conceal," 
said  Patricia,  a  little  nettled,  and  looking  straight  up  at  Mr. 
Hamley. 

She  had  borne  her  aunt's  rebuke  in  silence,  but  when  her 
aunt's  husband  took  her  in  hand  she  found  humility  and  the 
acceptance  of  undeserved  blame  difficult. 

"  Whew  ! "  said  that  gentleman  with  a  prolonged  whistle  j 
"  but  we  can  show  fight  then  when  we  get  our  blood  up,  can  we  V 

"  Oh,  Mr.  Hamley  ! "  broke  in  Dora,  her  fair  face  dimpled 
into  the  loveliest  little  labyrinth  of  smiles,  "  I  wish  you  would 
tell  us  that  delicious  story  of  yours — that  fight  between  the 
Irish  carmen  ! " 

Mr.  Hamley  laughed  noisily.  This  fight  between  two  Dub- 
lin carmen,  which  took  place  on  the  Quay  when  he  once  went 
over  on  business  to  what  he  always  called  Paddy-land — men  of 
Mr.  Hamley's  stamp  are  sure  to  be  ethnologically  insolent — 
was  his  favourite  battle-horse  ;  and  to  be  asked  to  repeat  it  was 
always  pleasant  to  him,  and  never  fatiguing.  So,  stretching 
out  his  legs,  he  began  with  more  than  usual  gesture  and  em- 
phasis ;  and  the  incident  of  the  letter  passed  without  further 
comment.  But  it  shook  the  Hamley  trust  in  Patricia's  honesty, 
and  inclined  them  to  doubt  her  gravely,  and  to  debate  whether 
her  apparent  straightforwardness  was  not  rather  the  artf'ulest 
kind  of  sham. 


HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND.  119 

"Now  then,  Miss  Prue,  what  was  there  to  make  snch  a  fuss 
about  ?  "  laughed  Dora  when  she  and  Patricia  were  alone  in  the 
drawing-room.  "  You  ridiculous  old  simpleton  ! "  very  prettily, 
quite  in  the  manner  of  a  caress. 

"I  don't  know,"  said  Patricia.  "  I  don't  understand  what  it 
all  meant,  nOr  why  I  might  not  have  opened  the  letter  at  .table 
before  everybody  without  a  word  being  said.  It  was  only  to 
please  you,  Dora,  and  because  you  told  me  not,  that  1  did  not." 

*  You  dear  old  thing,  said  Dora,  "  it  was  just  a  little  joke  ! 
I  wanted  to  see  if  you  could  be  depended  on,  that  was  all — if 
you  were  really  as  loyal  to  your  word  as  I  believed  you  to 
be." 

"  I  think  you  might  have  been  sure  of  that,"  replied  Patricia 
with  a  certain  reproachful  sorrow  in  her  face.  "  I  would  trust 
you,  Dora,  without  testing  you." 

"  Well,  don't  look  as  if  you  were  going  to  cry  !  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley-will  be  asking  what  is  the  matter,  and  then  there  will  be 
more  complications;"  said  Dora,  shrugging  her  shoulders. 

And  Patricia  was  as  much  startled  as  if  a  cold  wind  had  sud- 
denly blown  over  her,  by  the  cool,  half-annoyed  and,  half-in- 
different tone  in  which  the  girl  spoke.  It  did  strike  her  as 
being  just  a  little  bit  ungrateful  after  she  had  been  going 
through  such  a  disagreeable  experience  for  her  sake. 

"Dr.  Fletcher,"  said  the  servant  opening  the  door. 

People  call  early  in  country  places,  and  though  it  was  not 
yet  quite  noon  there  was  nothing  in  the  hour  to  cause  a  re- 
mark, so  far  as  Milltown  habits  went ;  but  Dora  shrugged  her 
shoulders  again  ;  this  time  petulantly.  Dr.  Fletcher  was  evi- 
dently not  one  of  her  favourites. 

A  tall,  lean,  angular  man  with  iron-grey  hair  and  leathery 
lanthorn  jaws  came  with  a  kind  of  lazy  awkwardness  into  the 
room.  His  eyes  were  large  and  bright,  but  meditative  rather 
than  observant ;  his  face  was  grave,  even  sorrowful,  like  the 
face  of  a  man  who  has  thought  much  on  the  miseries  and  per- 
plexities of  life ;  but  his  smile  was  sweet,  more  sweet  than 
joyous,  and  a  wo ndetfnl' grace  of  patience  and  kindness  rested 
on  him.  He  looked  older  than  his  age  and  he  was  evidently 
in  delicate  health  ;  which  was  perhaps  another  reason  why  his 
face  had  that  unmistakable  look  of  a  man  to  whom  life  is  tragi- 
cally real,  not  a  mere  summer  day's  holiday,  and  who  has  takep 


1 20  "  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

it  to  heart  to  live  manfully  according  to  that  reality  and  to 
leave  the  summer  pastimes  to  the  children. 

He  was  a  man  of  private  moans,  but  by  no  means  wealthy. 
When  old  Mr.  Fletcher  died  he  left  just  enough  for  his  son  and 
daughter  to  live  on,  without  the  need  of  sordid  economy  on  the 
one  side  or  the  possibility  of  self-indulgent  extravagance  on  the 
other.  And  on  his  death  Dr.  Fletcher  retired  from  the  pro- 
fession which  had  always  been  irksome  to  him  in  its  practical 
and  business  aspect,  and  came  back  to  the  old  home  at  Mill- 
town  where  he  could  study  without  interruption.  He  was  one 
of  the  quiet  men  who  think  and  are  still,  not  one  of  the  active 
sort  who  go  out  into  the  world  to  fight  and  cry  aloud.  His 
life  was  mainly  an  endeavour  to  disentangle  some  of  the  many 
problems  which  perplex  society,  and  to  create  for  himself  some 
kind  of  intelligible  hypothesis  in  the  midst  of  so  much  that  is 
dark  and  undetermined.  And  to  do  this,  he  went  for  his  light 
to  science. 

Of  course  he  was  considered  fatally  unsound  in  Milltown. 
The  most  independent  thinker  that  respectable  community  had 
ever  had,  he  was  naturally  styled  Atheist  by  people  who 
thought  religion  consisted  in  denying  the  right  of  private  judg- 
ment or  individual  interpretation.  Men  said,  with  a  kind  of 
shudder,  that  he  believed  neither  in  God  nor  Devil — but  to 
disbelieve  in  the  latter  was  the  worse  crime  of  the  two ;  he  was 
known  to  deny  eternity  of  punishment — which  was  an  awful 
questioning  of  God's  mercy ;  and  his  scientific  pursuits  were 
subjects  of  sorrre  scorn,  much  reprehension,  and  the  profound- 
est  disbelief  in  their  truth  or  value.  And  those  who  knew 
least  about  them  despised  them  most,  and  flouted  him  with  the 
challenge  to  explain  how  or  why  a  tree  grew,  and  to  recompose 
into  life  the  elements  he  pretended  to  weigh  and  measure  and 
tabulate  in  death. 

His  want  of  ambition,  too,  was  disapproved  of  and  held  to  be 
a  shameful  wrapping  up  of  talents  ;  and  every  one  agreed  that 
with  his  abilities  he  ought  to  do  something — indeed  ought  to 
have  done  something  long  ago.  They  considered  he  had  done 
nothing  yet,  because  fame  had  not  beaten  her  tomtom  before 
him.  The  quiet  rendering  of  a  noble  lite  seemed  to  be  worse 
than  nothing  to  the  children  of  an  age  which  reverences  chiefly 
blare  and  tinsel  For  his  own  part,  when  he  was  told  that  be 


HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND.  121 

ought  to  do  something  and  make  a  fortune,  he  answered  that 
he  thought  that  those  who  had  enough  should  he  contented; 
and  he  held  it  ignoble  in  the  well-endowed  to  still  further  crowd 
the  glutted  labour-market,  lessening  the  wages  of  the  workers 
by  necessity  by  just  so  much  as  they  earned  for  their  superflui- 
ties. This  might  be  bad  political  economy  he  used  to  add  with 
a  smile.  Some  of  his  friends  said  it  was  ;  but  it  was  human 
justice  all  the  lame  ;  and,  for  the  rest,  political  economy  must 
go.  He  deprecated  the  race  for  wealth,  the  greed  of  gain, 
characteristic  of  the  present  day.  He  deprecated  the  tumult 
and  excitement  and  clamour  of  our  social  life,  the  luxury  and 
the  sensuality  of  our  homes  ;  and  what  he  deprecated  in  others 
that  he  refused  for  himself.  But  Milltown  did  not  endorse  his 
doctrines.  Indifferent  to  fear,  to  pleasure,  to  ambition,  merely 
a  calm,  wise,  just  thinker,  who  appraised  things  at  their  real 
value,  and  was  content  to  accept  certain  theorems  as  unprov- 
able — the  well-fed  lives  and  uninquiring  minds  ofk  that  little 
paradise  of  conservative  respectability  had  no  s'ympathy  with 
such  an  iconoclast  and  blasphemer  of  its  gods  !  The  old  pro- 
verb was  verified ;  the  prophet  had  no  honour  among  his 
townsfolk,  and  the  most  charitable  interpretation  of  a.  life  that 
dared  to  be  real  and  a  mind  that  dared  to  be  ignorant  was, 
that  Henry  Fletcher  was  mad.  And  many  added,  his  sister 
Catherine  with  him. 

Dr.  Fletcher  seldom  called  anywhere,  but  perhaps  less  fre- 
quently at  Abbey  Holme  than  even  other  places.  Dora  Drum- 
mond's  pretty  manners  pleased  him,  certainly,  for  he  had  a 
benign  kind  of  pleasure  in  contemplating  children  and  young 
people  and  all  other  things  fresh  and  beautiful ;  but  he  did  not 
feel  at  one  with  Mr.  Hamley.  Not  because  he  was  a  self-made 
man — his  sympathies  would  have  naturally  gone  that  way — 
but  because  he  was  a  vulgar  and  ostentatious  man,  one  whom 
he  mistrusted  and  took  to  be  a  mask,  of  which  the  reality  was 
very  different  from  the  appearance.  Also,  he  could  never  over- 
come a  certain  repugnance  ior  Mrs.  Hamley.  That  a  woman 
of  her  pretensions  to  ultra-refinement. of  character,  whose  birth 
and  breeding  were  her  strong  points,  and  who  spared  no  sister 
in  he»  sorrow,  no  brother  in  his  weakness,  could  have  sold  her- 
self to  a  man  of  Mr.  Hamley 's  stamp  for  money  and  a  settle- 
ment, was  so  far  out  of  his  ideas  of  womanly  dignity  and 


122  "WHAT  WOFLD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

purity,  not  to  speak  of  that  other  virtue  of  his  for  which  the 
world  said  he  was  mad — the  virtue  of  sincerity  of  life — that  in 
spite  of  his  long  acquaintance  with  her  and  her  family,  he  could 
never  feel  for  her  cordially,  nor  look  on  her  as  other  than  self- 
degraded.  And  yet  he  pitied  her.  He  thought  the  need  which 
had  forced  her  into  such  a  marriage  must  have  been  indeed  a 
crushing  one  !  And  in  pitying  her  he  tried  to  forget  his  repug- 
nance, aiul  perhaps  went  up  to  call  as  if  in  silent  atonement 
for  the  personal  distaste  of  which  he  had  been  conscious  for 
both  her  and  her  husband. 

Dr.  Fletcher  had  been  from  home  of  late  and  had  only  just 
returned  ;  by  which  it  came  about  that  although  Patricia  had 
been  at  Abbey  Holme  for  some  time  now,  he  had  neither  seen 
nor  even  heard  of  her.  He  looked  at  her  curiously  as  he  came 
in,  but  in,  Mrs.  Hamley's  absence  Dora  did  not  dare  to  take  on 
herself  the  responsibility  of  an  introduction.  If  Mrs.  Hamley's  life 
was  made  up  of  small  things,  was  not  dear  Dora's  success  due  to 
her  clever  comprehension  thereof1?  But  though  not  introduced, 
Dr.  Fletcher  took  a  liking  to  the  new  girl.  There  was  that 
kind  of  fearlessness  which  is  born  of  innocence  and  unsuspi- 
ciousuess  in  Patricia's  eyes  and  bearing  that  interested  him, 
even  through  her  silence.  She  looked  a  new  specimen  for 
Milltown ;  and  he  liked  new  specimens.  Then  she  was 
beautiful ;  and  beauty,  even  to  leathery  skin  and  iron-grey 
hair,  is  interesting.  And  the  mental  trouble  of  her  late  state 
had  given  her  a  yet  greater  charm  than  of  old.  If  something 
of  her  former  exuberant  radiance  had  gone  out  of  her,  more  of 
depth  had  taken  its  place ;  and  the  abounding  vitality  which 
had  given  her  happiness  such  infinite  enrichment  gave  now  her 
sadder  phase  as  much  pathos. 

Then  the  two  girls  made  a  pretty  picture  and  harmonised  by 
the  very  force  of  contrast.  The  one  was  dressed  in  a  simple 
gown  of  some  soft  black  material,  hanging  in  straight,  deep 
folds,  the  severity  of  which  was  relieved  round  the  throat  and 
wrists  by  a  line  of  transparent  white ;  the  other  was  in  the 
daintiest  and  most  coquettish  grey  that  had  nothing  of  mourn- 
ing but  its  newness.  The  one  was  richly  coloured  yet  in  a  low 
key,  her  dark  brown  hair,  brightened  with  gold,  framing  her 
creamy  skin  heavily,  gorgeously,  her  figure  generously  designed, 
but  as  yet  showing  only  the  long  unfulfilled  forms  of  youth ; 


HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND.  123 

and  the  other  was  fair,  dainty,  all  pink  and  white,  and  blue  and 
gold,  and  every  tint  clear  if  slightly  crude,  every  line  rounded, 
every  form  fully  moulded.  They  made  indeed  a  pretty  picture  ; 
and  Dr.  Fletcher  looked  at  them  with  his  quiet  eyes  approv- 
ingly. In  character,  too,  that  superficial  kind  of  character 
which  lies  on  the  outside,  how  different  they  were  !  Patricia, 
<i  woman  nobly  planned  by  nature,  left  pretty  much  to  nature 
to  complete  ;  and  Dora,  the  careful  creation  of  art  and  educa- 
tion, pretty,. graceful,  well-bred,  good-natured,  but  not  real : — 
Patricia  looking  as  if  she  was  capable  of  being  a  heroine  in 
more  directions  than  one,  from  a  Joan  of  Arc  to  a  Saint 
Theresa  and  onwards  to  a  hospital  nurse  or  a  poor  man's  loyal 
helpmate  ;  and  Dora  fit  only  for  the  soft  things  of  life,  a  draw- 
ing-room lady  from  head  to  heel,  to  whom  it  would  be  martyr- 
dom to  be  without  a  maid  for  four-and-twenty  hours,  and 
whose  sole  endeavour  in  life  was  to  avoid  unpleasantness,  get 
her  own  private  gathering  of  pleasures,  and  outwit  the  Nemesis 
belonging. 

All  this  Dr  Fletcher  took  in  in  a  fragmentary,  hazy  sort  of 
way,  and  then,  after  a  few  words  to  Dora,  he  turned  to  the 
silent  girl  who  was  doing  nothing  less  feminine  than  working 
square  stitches  on  coarse  canvas  as  badly  as  a  child  would 
have  worked  them,  and  said,  apropos  of  nothing  :'  "  You  are  a 
stranger  here  1 " 

It  was  rather  a  self-evident  proposition,  but  it  served  for  an 
opening  as  well  as  anything  else. 

"  Yes,"  answered  Patricia,  looking  up  with  her  big  bright 
eyes  ;  "  I  came  here  about  six  weeks  ago." 

"  Do  you  make  a  long  stay  1 "  , 

"  For  ever,  I  believe,"  said  Patricia  a  little  mournfully  and 
looked  at  Dora. 

Dora  was  looking  down,  occupied  with  a  difficult  stitch  in 
her  modern  point.  Dora's  stitches  were  often  difficult  when 
she  wished  neither  to  see  nor  to  show. 

"  Ah  ? — who  are  you  then  ?  "  asked  Dr.  Fletcher,  as  if  he 
was  asking  the  most  matter-of-fact  question  and  not  commit- 
ting any  offence  against  good  manners. 

Miss  Kemball  is  Mrs.  Hamley's  niece,"  said  Dora,  glancing 
uneasily  at  the  door. 

"  Ah  ! "  he  said  again  ;  then  after  a  moment's  reflection,  he 


124  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

asked,  in  his  slow  meditative  way.  Are  you  Robert's  daughter  ? " 

"No,  that  was  my  dear  uncle.  He  was  like  my  father  and 
I  loved  him  like  one,  but  my  real  father's  name  was  Reginald. 
I  don't  recollect  him  though,"  said  Patricia  tenderly. 

"  No,  I  suppose  not.  You  must  have  been  a  very  little 
child  when  he  died.  I  remember  him  quite  well,  poor  Regin- 
ald ! "  said  Dr.  Fletcher. 

"  You  remember  my  father  t "  she  cried  eagerly,  bending  for- 
ward to  look  into  his  face." 

"  Quite  well.  We  were  lads  together  here  at  home,  then  at 
the  same  school,  and  afterwards  together  at  college.  He. was 
the  youngest  of  the  family,  you  know,  and  Robert  was  the 
oldest.  Robert  roust  have  been  eighteen  or  twenty  years  older 
than  Reginald.  We  always  called  him  the  Captain,  even  in 
the  days  when  he  was  only  a  lieutenant.  Has  not  your  aunt 
introduced  you  to  your  old  family  friends  1  Milltown  is  your 
native  place." 

"  I  remember  now  all  about  you  ;  and  you  have  a  relation,  a 
lawyer  in  London  !  "  cried  Patricia  in  a  breathless  kind  of  way  ; 
as  the  scene,  when  Gordon  was  telling  her  uncle  in  the  porch 
about  his  journey,  and  the  good  fellow,  the  lawyer,  he  had  met 
in  town,  came  like  a  photograph  before  her  mind.  The  sunshine  ; 
the  blue,  bright  freshened  sea  ;  the  white  sails  of  the  passing 
ships  ;  the  crimson  leaves  of  the  Virginia  creeper  round  her 
window  from  the  midst  of  which  she  leaned,  looking  at  the 
fair-faced  youth  standing  in  the  sunlight  talking  to  the  kind 
and  generous  guardian  of  her  past  life — all  so  full  of  colour,  of 
careless  joy,  of  fearlessness  and  freedom  !  Dr.  Fletcher  became 
at  once  something  nearer  and  more  special  than  anyone  else. 
He.  had  a  secret  link  with  that  happy  past  which  no  one  else 
had,  and  of  which  no  one  else  knew. 

"  I  am  glad  to  know  you,"  she  said  with  a  passionate  ring 
in  her  voice. 

All  in  a  flush  and  a  tremor  she  rose  from  her  seat  and  went 
over  to  him,  offering  both  her  hands.  Was  he  not  her  dear 
dead  uncle's  friend  ?  And  had  not  bis  relative,  whoever  he 
might  be,  been  good  to  Gordon  ? 

Dr.  Fletcher  took  her  hands  as  she  offered  them.  He  was 
not  a  demonstrative  man,  and  he  bad  a  wholesome  horror  o' 
ordinary  young  ecstasies  ;  but  Patricia's  excitement  seemed  of 


HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND.  125 

a  different  kind,  and  if  it  embarrassed  him  it  did  not  revolt 
him.  Not  that  he  knew  what  to  do  with  her  hands  when  he 
had  them,  and  he  wished  she  had  not  held  them  out  to  him ; 
but  he  pressed  them  in  a  nice  comfortable  way  and  looked 
into  her  face  kindly ;  and  that  was  reception  enough  for  Patri- 
cia. 

He  was  holding  her  thus,  she  standing  before  him  bending 
down  her  face  looking  into  his,  and  he  just  saying,  "  You  must 
come  and  see  my  sister  Catherine,  child,"  when  the  door  opened 
and  Mrs.  Hamley  entered.  She  had  that  habit  of  coming  into 
a  room  when  she  was  least  wanted. 

"  I  see  there  is  no  need  of  an  introduction  between  you  and 
my  niece,  Dr.  Fletcher,"  said  the  lady  of  Abbey  Holme  in  a 
cold  voice. 

Before  she  had  married  Mr.  Hamley,  by-the-by,  he  had  been 
Henry  and  she  Rosanna ;  as  is  the  way  with  people  in  the 
country  who  have  been  brought  up  in  the  same  place. 

"  Miss  Kemball  and  I  have  fraternized  over  the  past,"  said 
Dr.  Fletcher.  "  She  did  not  know  that  I  had  been  her  father's 
chum,  and  the  Captain's  too  in  a  minor  degree." 

"  And,  in  return,  she  seems  inclined  to  accept  you  as  her 
uncle,  faute  de  mieux"  Mrs.  Hamley  made  answer  with  a  sarcas- 
tic smile. 

Oh,  amu.  you  do  not  know  what  it  is  to  meet  gome  one  who 
knows  something  about  one  in  a  strange  place  !  "  said  Patricia 
impulsively. 

"  No  doubt,  my  dear,"  Mrs.  Hamley  answered  drily.  "  Of 
course  I  know  nothing  of  you  or  your  family." 

"But  I  heard  uncle  speak  of  Dr.  Fletcher  only  the  day 

before" she  hesitated— " the  wreck,"  she  added,  after  a 

pause. 

"  My  poor  brother  must  hare  been  singularly  reticent  if  Dr. 
Fletcher  is  the  only  one  of  his  numerous  Milltown  friends  of 
whom  he  spoke  to  you.  He  knew  every  one  there  was  to 
know,  and  naturally  every  one  knew  him,"  said  Aunt  Hamley 
with  the  same  dry  tone  and  unpleasant  smile. 

"  Still,  it  is  something  to  hear  those  one  loves  spoken  of  with 
love,"  cried  Patricia  fervently. 

"  The  inference  is  neither  flattering  nor  just,"  returned  Aunt 
Hamley  with  a  formal  movement  of  her  head.  "  Now  we  will 


126  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

drop  the  discussion,  if  you  please.  It  is  one  in  which  Dr. 
Fletcher  can  scarcely  feel  an  interest,  and  of  which  I  hope  he 
will. not  accept  the. interpretation  you  have  endeavoured  to 
insinuate." 

She  waved  back  the  answer  that  rose  to  the  girl's  lips  with 
the  manner  which,  when  she  put  it  on,  no  one  had  yet  been 
found  able  to  withstand.  It  was  her  slave-chain  with  which  she 
compelled  her  husband  ;  the  grand  air  which  had  always  carried 
Milltown,  and  which,  more  than  anything  else,  had  maintained 
that  queer  shadowy  thing  called  position  both  when,  as  a  pen- 
niless lady  she  had  been  as  it  were  a  lioness  with  her  claws  cut, 
and  now,  when  the  wife  of  a  moneyed  nobody  she  was  a  lioness 
with  her  claws  well  grown,  though  she  was  yoked  to  a  very 
low-bred  and  clay-carrying  cart-horse.  In  the  former  case  she 
had  never,  as  she  said,  forgotten  herself  nor  suffered  any  one 
else  to  forget  her  :  in  the  latter,  she  insisted  that  Milltown 
should  accept  the  axiom  which  tells  how  the  greater  includes 
.the  less.  Given  the  lioness  and  the  cart-horse  in  the  same  yoke, 
and  the  regality  of  the  one  shall  overshadow  and  merge  into  it- 
self the  clay-carrying  of  the  other.  So  .far  she  was  both  wise 
and  brave,  and  her  grand  air  merited  the  reward  it  gained. 

Her  'grand  air,  however,  was  not  very  formidable  to  Dr. 
Fletcher.  He  knew  his  old  friend,  Rosanna  Kemball,  pretty 
well  after  half  a  century's  intimate  acquaintance ;  and,  for  his 
own  part,  doubted  her  zoology.;  So,  undisturbed  and  undis- 
mayed, he  talked  as  much  to  Patricia  as -he  did  to  Mrs.  Hatnley 
herself,  and  made  her  tell  him  all  about  her  past  life  and  her 
uncle,  Barsands  and  the  Mermaid,  till  the  girl  was  quite  rapt 
away  at  last,  and  for  a  few  moments  was  oblivious  of  everything 
but  her  memories. 

"Dear  old  Barsands!"  she  said,  throwing  back  her  head; 
and  one  thick  twist  of  hair  came  loose  aud  fell  down  her  back. 
"  Oh,  life  was  good  then  !  "  she  cried. 

Her  face  lighted  up  as  she  spoke  with  a  sudden  effulgence  of 
passion  and  beauty  that  gave  it  a  totally  different  character 
from  the  ordinary  expression  it  wore.  Even  her  aunt  was 
startled,  and  Dr.  Fletcher  looked  at  her  with  half  a  smile  and 
half  a  sigh. 

"  You  must  come  and  see  my  sister  Catherine,"  he  said  again ; 
and  touched  her  arm. 


HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND  127 

She  started,  and  looked  at  him  as  if  he  had  awakened  her ; 
passed  her  hand  over  her  forehead,  and  drew  a  deep  breath ;  was 
conscious  of  the  straying  length  of  hair,  of  her  aunt's  cold  eyes, 
of  the  heavy,  gorgeous  drawing-roora,  of  all  her  loss  and  all  her 
change.  The  brightness,  the  rapture,  the  effulgence  passed; 
she  was  only  one  of  the  inmates  of  Abbey  Holme ;  and  Mrs. 
Hamley  disapproved  of  dreamers. 

"  I  shall  be  very  glad,"  she  said  in  her  frank  way,  after  a 
"pause.  "  When  shall  I  come  ? " 

Mrs.  Hamley's  thin  lips  crisped  and  Dora's  pursed  in  sym- 
pathy. 

"  Are  you  quite  sure,  Dr.  Fletcher,  that  your  sister  will  care 
to  be  troubled  with  so  young  a  companion  ? "  she  said  coldly. 

"  You  know  Catharine ! "  he  answered.  "Your  niece — what 
is  your  name,  child  ?— Patricia  ? — Patricia,"  he  continued,  turn- 
ing back  to  Mrs.  Hamley,  "  is  just  the  kind  of  thing  she  will 
like.  You  know  of  old  we  have  no  nonsense  at  the  Hollies. 
When  can  you  come,  do  you  say  ? "  to  Patricia.  "  When  she 
comes  home.  That  will  be  in  about  a  week's  time ;  and  then  I 
expect  you  two  will  make  great  friends." 

"  It  will  not  be  my  fault  if  we  do  not,"  said  Patricia 
simply.  And  Dr.  Fletcher  stroked  his  beard,  and  said  "  No," 
gravely. 

When  he  had  gone  the  trouble  began.  Aunt  Hamley  was 
put  out,  and  life  was  difficult  when  the  mistress  of  Abbey 
Holme  was  cross.  She  first  scolded  Patricia  for  her  "  abomin- 
able forwardness ; "  and  Patricia  unwisely  defended  herself,  and 
assured  her,  with  quite  superfluous  energy,  that  she  never 
dreamt  of  being  forward,  and  was  only  glad  to  see  Dr.  Fletcher 
because  he  spoke  so  kindly  of  dear  uncle  and  poor  papa.  And 
then  Mrs.  Hamley  turned  against  Dora,  and  told  her  very 
coldly  and  with  a  great  parade  of  politeness,  that  she  had  no 
business  to  introduce  any  one  in  her  absence.  How  did  she 
know  what  her  wishes  were  with  respect  to  Patricia's  becoming 
acquainted  with  the  Fletchers  ?  They  were  old  acquaintances, 
certainly  ;  but  they  were  very  odd  people,  and  Patricia  was 
quite  eccentric  enough  as  things  were,  she  scarcely  needed  being 
made  more  so  by  outside  influence.  A  great  deal,  too,  was  said 
of  Dr.  Fletcher's  peculiar  opinions  ;  and  though  she  had  never 
sounded  him  herself,  having  no  patience  with  him,  she  knew 


128  "  WHAT  WOULD  TOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

that  he  held  crotchets  in  theology — of  itself  a  most  undesirable 
thing. 

The  doubts  of  striving  souls  struggling  for  light  amid  the 
darkness  had  no  kind  of  sympathy  from  Aunt  Hamley  !  And 
when  she  came  to  this  part  of  her  subject  she  went  off  into  a 
long  disquisition  on  the  folly  and  impiety  of  thinking  for  one- 
self on  religion,  or  indeed  on  any  matter  whatsoever  settled  for 
one  by  authority.  • 

"  As  if  any  one  could  understand  a  thing  we  were  never  meant 
to  understand  ! "  she  said  contemptuously.  "  Such  presump- 
tion !  Just  like  Henry  Fletcher,  though  ! " 

On  which  she  blamed  Dora  again  ;  and  drawing  a  vivid  pic- 
ture of  Patricia's  subsequent  infidelity  and  lost  condition,  made 
her  a  present  of  it  as  her  work  and  the  result  of  this  morning's 
introduction.  But  drawing  it  as  she  did,  with  her  broadest 
colours  and  most  comprehensive  manner,  she  pleased  herself  so 
much  that  she  forgot  she  was  angry.  It  was  a  clever,  artistic 
sketch,  and  the  composition  of  it  soothed  her. 

And  when  she  had  ended,  dear  Dora  raised  her  eyes  and  said 
very  meekly,  "  I  know  all  you  say  is  quite  true,  dear,  but  what 
could  I  do  1  He  said  he  knew  Patricia  was  a  Kemball  because 
she  was  so  like  you,  and  he  asked  to  be  introduced." 

"  In  that  case  you  could  scarcely  have  refused,"  said  Mrs. 
Hamley,  who,  with  her  eyes  full  of  that  brilliant  face  she  had 
just  seen,  felt  the  flattery  pleasant. 

"  Dr.  Fletcher  seems  to  have  taken  quite  a  fancy  to  Patricia ; 
perhaps  it  is  a  rtchauffi  of  the  very  friendly  feeling  he  seems  to 
have  had  for  you,"  laughed  Dora  significantly. 

"  Nonsense,  child  ! "  said  Mrs.  Hamley. 

But  she  smiled.  She  was  old  enough  to  be  Dr.  Fletcher's 
mother — what  of  that  \  Was  she  not  Mr.  Harnley's  wife,  and 
was  not  Mr.  Hamley  born  in  the  same  year  as  Henry  Fletcher? 
Old  enough  for  maternity  or  not,  the  multiplicity  of  her  lovers 
was  one  of  Mrs.  Hamley's  weak  points.  No  man  had  ever 
spoken  to  her  with  any  appearance  of  interest  in  the  conversa- 
tion but  he  had  been  marked  in  her  diary  as  "another  victim." 
According  to  her  the  main  fact  of  her  own  unwritten  history 
was  that  every  marriageable  gentleman  in  Milltown  had  some 
time  or  other  in  his  life  yearned  to  make  her  his  own  ;  and 
though  she  could  not  always  add  that  he  had  expressly  said  so, 


HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND.  12i) 

she  was  never  at  a  loss  to  account  for  his  silence — the  signs  by 
which  the  poor  fellow  had  betrayed  his  broken-hearted  condi- 
tion having  told  her  more  than  his  enforced  reticence  had  been 
able  to  conceal.  In  truth  she  has  been  a  handsome  girl  in  her 
day,  tall  and  showy,  insatiably  vain  and  as  insatiably  ambitious. 
In  truth  too,  one  honest  young  fellow  whom  she  had  led  on  and 
then  denied  had  really  blown  out  his  brains  for  love  of  her  ; 
and  the  sacrifice  had  so  far  touched  her  own  that  she  had  ever 
since  then  considered  herself  irresistible  and  fatal. 

"  No  !  no  nonsense  at  all,  dear,"  returned  Dora.  "  Why!  how 
can  you  say  so  ? "  with  remonstrance.  "  Why  else  has  Dr. 
Fletcher  never  married  ?  All  Milltown  knows  that !  " 

"  Dora,  you  stupid  child,  I  will  not  have  you  talk  such  rub- 
bish! "  said  Aunt  Hamley  laughing;  then  turning  to  Patricia 
she  said  kindly  :  "  I  dare  say,  dear,  it  did  a  little  upset  you  to 
see  an  old  family  friend.  That  was  perhaps  natural,  as  you 
have  been  nowhere  yet  in  the  neighbourhood.  But  you  must 
indeed  learn  to  suppress  your  feelings,  child,  and  be  more  like 
other  people,  else  I  don't  know  where  we  shall  be  !  " — good- 
naturedly.  "  So  now  take  what  I  have  said  in  good  part,  and 
remember  /  am  your  best  friend — the  truest  you  have  in  the 
world,  in  every  sense.  Though  I  know  my  duty  to  you  tod  well 
to  spoil  you." 

Patricia  went  over  to  her  and  kissed  her;  and  dear  Dora, 
who  knew  that  she  hated  to  be  kissed  and  loved  to  be  praised, 
said  in  her  most  caressing  way  : 

"  Friend  !  You  are  the  friend  of  everyone,  you  darling  I  What 
should  we  all  do  without  you,  I  wonder  ? " 

"  Badly,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  and  sighed. 

For  the  moment  she  was,  to  her  own  mind,  a  kind  of  Mary- 
mother-martyr,  bearing  on  her  hands  the  sorrows  and  incapa- 
cities of  the  whole  neighbourhood. 

"  Dora  !  I  did  not  hear  Dr.  Fletcher  ask  to  be  introduced  to 
me  ;  on  the  contrary  he  asked  straight  out  who  I  was  ;  and  I  did 
not  hear  him  say  I  was  like  Aunt  Hamley,"  said  Patricia  in  a 
tone  of  surprise  when  Aunt  Hamley  had  left  them  alone 
again. 

She  had  advanced  so  far  in  worldly  knowledge  as  to  keep 
these  interrogations  for  her  tete~b-tetes  with  Dora ;  of  itself  some- 
thing. 


130  "  WHAT  WOULD  VOtT  DO.  LOVE  ?  " 

rt  Nor  did  I,"  answered  Dora  coolly. 

"  Oh,  Dora  !  " 

"  Oh,  Dora !  and  what  then,  you  dear  little  prude  ?  Now 
Patricia  be  reasonable ! "  said  Dora,  changing  from  banter  to 
earnestness.  "  Have  some  common-sense,  child,  or  you  will 
make  your  life  here  simply  intolerable  !  What  possible  harm 
was  there  in  saying  what  I  did  to  Mrs.  Hamley  ?  She  would 
have  gone  on  scolding  till  now,  making  herself  and  everyone 
else  ill  and  miserable,  unless  I  had  turned  her  thoughts  by  my 
master-stroke.  To  say  that  the  stupid  old  man  thought  you 
like  her,  pleased  her ;  of  course  she  understood  the  compliment ; 
and  1  dare  say.  you  are  like  what  she  was,  for  she  must  have 
been  very  beautiful  in  her  time  " — that  scored  one  for  Patricia  in 
her  own  mind  ;  bub  Patricia  was  too  stupid  to  see  the  compli- 
ment implied — "  and  to  say  that  he  asked  to  be  introduced  to 
you  took  the  load  off  my  head.  He  wanted  it  if  he  did  not 
ask  for  it,  so  what  harm  did  I  do  ? " 

"  What  is  not  the  truth  is  always  harm,"  said  Patricia. 

"  Bah,  my  dear  !  you  will  have  to  unlearn  that  nonsense  before 
you  have  done  with  Abbey  Holme,  that  is  all  I  can  tell  you  1 
We  have  to  get  through  the  world  in  the  best  way  we  can ;  and 
if  a  white  lie  that  hurts  no  one  helps  us  to  keep  peace  and  avoid 
pain,  it  is  lawful,"  said  Dora  with  a  dash  of  scorn. 

"  No,  Dora,  it  is  not ! "  replied  Patricia,  earnestly. 

u  Don't  be  silly,"  she  answered.  "  If  you  had  been  brought 
up  between  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hamley  as  I  have  been,  you  would 
have  learnt  the  same  lessons  that  I  have.  I  would  tell  any 
story  in  the  world,  perjure  myself  anyhow,  to  prevent  scolding 
and  quarrelling.  And  so  you  would  have  done  ;  and  so  you 
will  do  before  you  are  many  months  older  !  " 

"  Never,  Dora  !  Rather  than  condescend  to  a  life  of  false- 
hood I  would  leave,  no  matter  what  I  did  ! "  cried  Patricia.  "  1 
would  beg  my  bread  first." 

"And  I  like  mine  baked  for  me  with  plenty  of  butter," 
laughed  Dora.  Then  suddenly  changing  her  voice  she  said, 
rather  loudly,  "  I  like  home-made  bread,  don't  you  ? "  She  had 
heaid  Mrs.  Hamley's  footstep  injthe  hall,  and  knew  that  they 
would  linger  just  a  moment  by  the  door  before  she  opened  it ; 
and  they  had  home-macle  bread  at  Abbey  Holme. 

Nothing  further  happened  till  the  day  of  the  Cragfoot  din- 


HER  FATHER'S  FRIEND.  131 

ner,  beyond  the  troubles  between  Patricia  and  her  aunt  which 
would  break  out  in  spite  of  Dora's  care.  For,  as  if  to  make  up 
for  her  loose  morality  by  personal  kindness,  she  had  constituted 
herself  Patricia's  guardian  angel  at  all  points.  She  had 
patience  with  her  inept  fingers  and  tried  in  vain  to  teach  her 
tatting  ;  she  worked  a  point-lace  butterfly  for  her  hair,  with  the 
Venetian  stitches  put  in  in  black ;  she  made  her  head  ache  by 
dressing  her  hair  in  a  responsible-looking  chignon  ;  laboured 
over  bfczique,  in  which  the  former  steerswoman  of  the  Mermaid 
was  simply  hopeles* ;  defended  her  against  herself :  and  some- 
how brought  out  her  most  glaring  misdemeanours  against  the 
Hamley  laws  as  shining  virtues  of  intention,  or  at  the  worst, 
the  venial  mistakes  of  ignorance  ;  she  wound  herself  more  and 
more  round  the  girl's  heart — that  heart  which  only  asked  leave 
to  love  ! — till  Patricia  fairly  worshipped  her,  and  would  have 
gladly  died  to  save  her  an  hour's  pain  ;  she  became  more  and 
more  the  peace-maker  of  the  house,  faultless  in  tact,  in  temper, 
in  kindness,  in  quickness,  faulty  only  in  sincerity  and  truth. 
On  the  whole,  the  last  fortnight  had  been  a  happy  one.  Dora 
had  been  delightful ;  equal  to  every  emergency ;  at  the  head  of 
every  occasion.  Patricia,  guided  by  her,  was  beginning  to  un- 
derstand the  virtue  of  leaving  things  alone,  and  especially  the 
necessity  of  leaving  her  aunt  alone  when  she  had  a  headache. 
Mrs.  Hamley,  being  less  irritated  had  been  less  irritable  than 
usual;  and  Mr.  Hamley  too,  had  helped  to  keep  her  in  good 
case  by  his  blandest  and  most  flattering  attentions. 

For  his  own  part  he  had  been  radiant:  sleeker,  more 
shining,  more  abundantly  prosperous  than  ever.  He  had 
once  or  twice  even  spoken  genially  to  Patricia,  and  he  had  not 
spoken  so  much,  before  folk,  to  Dora.  It  was  all  that  dinner- 
party in  prospect  at  Cragfoot !  Life  had  narrowed  itself  very 
much  in  that  monotonous  house  when  an  ordinary  dinner-party 
half  a  mile  off,  was  an  event  to  be  chronicled  by  changed  tem- 
pers and  higher  spirits.  It  might  be  so  to  Dora  well  enough. 
She  was  young  ;  Sydney  Lowe  was  handsome,  and  a  note,  had 
passed  between  them.  ,  But  why  should  Mr.  Hamley  be  so 
pleasantly  moved  t  His  chains  must  be  heavy  if,  to  hare  four 
hours  away  from  the  Lady  and  alone  with  dear  Dora,  was  a 
chance  lor  so  much  inner  rejoicing.  However,  so  it  was  ;  and 
to  the  good  of  Colonel  Lowe's  account  must  be  carried  the 


132  "WHAT  \VOL'!YT>  VOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

fortnight's  spell  ot  comparative  brightness  that  had  ruled  the 
household  of  Abbey  Holme.  His  account  did  not  always  show 
so  much  to  the  good ;  nor  good  indeed  of  any  kind  in  the  home 
that  owned  him  for  its  master,  and  where  poor,  frightened, 
nervous  and  catarrhal  Mrs.  Lowe  called  him  husband. 


CANIS  IN  PKffiSEPL 


CHAPTER  XIIL 

CANIS  IN  PJLESEPI. 

.  LOWE  had  not  ceased  for  a  full  fortnight  daily  to 
express  her  astonishment  at  her  husband's  sudden  pro- 
posal,  first  to  have  a  dinner-party  at  all  when  they  did 
not  owe  one  and  when  money  was  so  difficult  to  get  out  of  the 
Colonel,  and  then  to  ask  the  Hamleys  whom  he  so  much  dis- 
liked. Why  should  ne  have  asked  them  of  all  people  in  the 
world  when,  from  the  first,  he  had  opposed  the  rich  brewer's 
reception  as  an  equal  among  them,  had  been  the  last  to  ask 
him,  and  had  never  called  Mrs.  Hamley  anything  since  her 
marriage  but  "  old  hag,"  "  mercenary  jade,"  and  the  like  ? 
He  himself  had  married  Lady  Anna  Graham's  daughter  for 
money  ;  but  let  that  pass.  Few  of  us  carry  pocket-mirrors  in 
our  conscience  ;  and  Colonel  Lowe  was  not  one  of  the  few. 
What  he  might  have  done  counted  for  so  much  ;  but  what 
Mrs.  Hamley  had  done  was  a  different  matter. 

Sidney  was  even  more  astonished  than  his  mother  at  this 
proposed  dinner-party.  Crafty,  therefore  suspicious,  and 
clear-sighted  as  a  rute,  this  time  he  was  off  the  track.  Hope, 
so  natural  to  the  young,  his  belief  in  his  power  over  his  father, 
and  the  passion  of  his  love,  all  helped  to  confuse  him.  For  he 
did  love  Dora  in  his  own  way  ;  and  if  his  own  way  was  but  a 
poor  kind  of  thing,  still  it  was  the  best  he  knew.  He  scarcely 
knew  how  to  take  this  proposed  dinner-party.  Was  it  a  trap 
or  a  chance  ?  inimical  or  providential  t  Did  his  father  suspect 
something,  and  so  resolve  to  see  on  what  terms  the  young  peo- 
ple stood  together,  for  their  future  discomfiture  t — or  had  he 
by  a  generous  impulse  wished  to  give  them  a  chance,  and  him- 
self the  opportunity  of  measuring  Dora  Drummond's  fitness  to 
become  the  future  Mrs.  Lowe  of  Cragfoot  ? 

Sydney  passed  a  good  deal  of  his  time  debating  these  alterna- 
tives ;  and  as  if  by  mutual  consent  the  Hamley  name  had  not 
once  been  mentioned  between  him  and  his  father  since  that 


134  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

little  tentative  brush  of  theirs  over  the  wine  and  walnuts.  His 
mother,  however,  many  times  bemoaned  her  hard  fate  to  him 
in  having  to  receive  Mr.  Hamley  at  all,  and  specially  at  an  un- 
necessary dinner ;  and  he  had  condoled  with  her  sympatheti- 
cally, and  confessed  it  was  an  kifliction,  but  it  would  be  all  over 
this  day  month  and  be  forgotten  as  if  it  had  never  been,  and 
she  was  not  to  bother  herself,  everything  would  go  right ;  with 
other  of  the  consolatory  speeches  he  sometimes  emplo3red  in 
those  rare  moments  when  he  played  at  being  an  affectionate  son 
to  his  maternal  parent.  But,  as  she  remembered  afterwards, 
he  had  ever  said  something  kind  of  the  Abbey  Holme  family. 
Even  while  he  agreed  with  her  that  Mr  Hamley  was  a  wretch 
for  whom  hanging  would  be  too  good,  he  had  managed  to 
make  his  abuse  vague  and  his  encomiums  precise.  She  had  riot 
noticed  it  at  the  time,  being  so  much  taken  up  with  her  dishes 
and  her  chills,  the  entrees  she  could  not  get,  and  her  eternal 
cold  that  would  not  go  ;  but  she  remembered  it  in  the  days 
when  the  past  was  read  by  the  light  of  the  future. 

When  the  .day  arrived,  and  they  were  settling  the  order  of 
precedence  and  the  necessary  arrangements  of  pairing  off,  &c., 
Colonel  Lowe,  smiling  pleasantly  to  his  son,  said,  "  And  you 
shall  have  the  pretty  heiress,  Syd  ?  For  I  suppose  she  will  be 
the  old  ruffian's  heiress  ? " 

'*  I  should  think  no  doubt  of  that,"  answered  Sydney,  briskly. 

"  And  I  dare  say  he  will  cut  up  well  when  the  devil  claims 
his  own?"  continued  the  Colonel  who  used  more  bad  language 
than  any  other  man  in  Milltown.  If  he  was  minded  to  do  his 
son  a  kindness  too,  he  was  also  minded  that  some  of  the  worth 
of  it  should  be  taken  out  in  annoyance. 

"  It  looks  like  it.  I  do  not  suppose  there  is  anything  flashy 
about  his  means,"  Sydney  answered  innocently. 

"  '  It  looks  like  it ! '  you  don't  know  what  he  is  worth  ?  You 
mean  to  say,  Syd  my  boy,  that  you  do  not  know  more  of  your 
Abbey  Holme  friends  than  '  suppose,'  and  '  looks  like  ? '  "  cried 
the  Colonel  with  aggravating  astonishment. 

"II  nol  Why  should  I  inquire  into  Mr.  Hamley'b  affairs  1 " 
said  Sydney,  shifting  uneasily  under  his  father's  eyes. 

"Well!  that  is  being  disinterested  and  confi^in^,  and  all 
the  other  Arcadian  virtues  in  a  heap  !"  cried  the  Colonel  with 
along  breath  something  between  a  whistle  and  an  ejaculation. 


CANIS  IN  PRjESEPL  135 

Sidney  flushed  and  tossed  back  his  hair,  but  he  did  not  take 
jp  the  glove. 

"  This  new  girl  may  come  in  for  her  share,"  put  in  Mrs. 
Lowe  following  the  main  text,  but  in  happy  ignorance  of  all 
that  was  to  be  read  between  the  lines.  "  She  is  a  Kemball ; 
and  the  Kemball's  are  a  good  family." 

"  That  shows  how  capable  you  are  of  giving  an  opinion  on 
such  matters  t  "  sneered  the  Colonel.  "  How  can  you  talk  such 
nonsense,  Matilda  t  The  old  shoeblack  holds  the  money,  and  you 
may  be  very  sure  he  will  not  slice  his  estate  to  make  his  wife's 
niece  equal  with  his  own.  He  will  go  in  for  founding  a  family, 
and  making  little  Miss  Twoshoes  his  heiress,  with  the  proviso 
to  keep  the  illustrious  name  of  Hamley  for  all  future  genera- 
tions. Those  fellows  of  mud  and  money  always  do  go  in' for 
founding  a  family,  poor  misguided  wretches  1 " 

Still  Sydney  did  not  answer.  That  discretion  which' is  the 
better  part  of  valour  was  in  the  ascendant  to-day,  and  Sydney 
would  have  borne  much  rather  than  have  given  his  father  an 
excuse  for  a  quarrel.  The  Colonel  knew  this,  and  pricked  him 
with  his  verbal  assegais  accordingly. 

"  It  is  lucky  for  her  that  little  Twoshoes  is  tolerably 
looking,"  he  went  onto  say.     "  She  is  not  bad  style,  all  thiiv 
considered."     Sydney  shot  a  glance  at  the  handsome,  contemp- 
tuous face,  that  meant  a  remembrancer,  but  failed  ;  and  the 
Colonel  went  on  in  the  same  oifensive  tone.     "  If  she  had  been 
a  healthy  young  woman,  with  the  good  tough  brown  hide  and 
milkmaid's  paws  of  her  degree,  she  would  have  lowered  her 
chances  by  as  many  points  as  she  would  have  gained  in  whole- 
someness.     Being  scrofulous,  she  has  therefore  the  superficial 
refinement  of  the  scrofulous — a  high  price  to  pay." 

<:  Scrofulous  !  how  can  you  say  such  a  thing  ! "  flamed  Syd- 
ney, caught  on  a  tender  point.  "  Her  health  is  perfect  and 
her  blood  is  as  pure  as  my  own." 

Colonel  Lowe's  eyes  twinkled,  and  he  smiled  beneath  his 
moustache.  "  Hit !  "  he  said  to  himself ;  then  aloud,  "  Bah  ! 
those  pink  and  white,  blue-eyed  golden-headed  things  are 
always  scrofulous,  and  Miss  Drummond  cannot  escape  the  in- 
evitable. She  is  paying  the  penalty  of  a  half-starved  ancestry, 
and  the  vitiated  air  of  centuries  of  hovels,  while  you,  dear  boy, 
have  always  been  a  gentleman  when  you  were  your  great-grand- 


136  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

father,  and  his  great-grandfather  to  boot.  The  flesh -an d-blood 
theory  is  all  very  \vell  for  hustings  claptrap,  but  don't  talk  to 
me  of  your  natural  equality  and  one  man  being  as  good  as 
another,  or  any  of  your  cursed  Radical  rubbish  ;  a  gentleman's 
a  gentleman,  and  a  snob's  a  snob,  and  God  Almighty  himself 
can't  make  them  different !  " 

"  Do  not  lose  your  temper  with  me,  dad.  I  am  not  a 
Radical,  nor  am  I  going  in  for  the  flesh-and-blood  theory,"  said 
Sydney  ;  while  Mrs.  Lowe  remonstrated  humbly  in  a  horrified 
whisper,  '*  Colonel  !  before  the  boy,  too  !" 

"  No,  I  don't  say  you  are.  Egad  you'd  be  no  son  of  mine  if 
you  did  !  "  said  the  Colonel.  "  But  it  vexes  me  to  hear  you 
couple  yourself  any  how  with  such  a  beggar's  brood  as  that 
Abbey  Holme  man's  !  A  ruffian  I  have  switched  in  the  streets, 
as  many  times  as  there  are  days  in  the  year,  and  now  he  is , 
dining  like  an  equal  at  my  own  table,  and  I  hear- my  son  say 
'  we,'  as  if  speaking  of  one  of  his  own  blood  !  It  galls  me  Syd, 
though  he  does  happen  to  have  a  pot  of  money,  and  could  buy 
us  Lowes  from  garret  to  basement  ;  arid  though  she  is  a  pretty 
girl,  she  is  not  one  for  you  to  look  at.  A  Lowe  should  have 
more  pride  ! " 

"  Bother  pride  when  a  pretty  girl  is  concerned  !  "  said  Sydney 
with  a  forced  laugh.  "  A  Lowe  has  always  had  toleiably  keen 
eyes  for  that ! — and  I  never  heard  of  one  among  us  who  asked 
whether  the  petticoat  was  of  silk  or  stuff  that  covered  a  clean 
pair  of  ankles  !" 

"  My  boy ! "  said  Mrs.  Lowe,  tears  starting  into  her  poor 
pale  eyes. 

She  would  have  been  in  her  right  place  as  a  placid  old  maid 
given  to  small  economies  and  smaller  charities  ;  or  as  a  by  no 
means  broken-hearted  widow  with  a  quiet  girl  who  would  have 
taken  all  the  house-keeping  trouble  off  her  hands,  and  given 
her  no  anxiety  about  her  morals  or  manners  ;  but  as  the  wife 
of  one  gentlemanlike  rou6  and  the  mother  of  another,  her  lot 
was  exceptionally  hard.  Small  wonder  at  her  persistent  vili- 
fication of  the  marriage  state,  and  the  morbid  horror  she  al- 
ways expressed  at  the  responsibility  of  giving  life  1 

"  Beg  pardon,  mater,  if  I  have  offended  you,"  said  Sydney, 
following  up  his  cue  of  filial  amiability.  •'  I  ought  to  have  re- 
membered that  you  were  there.  Be  a  Iwttwi  boy  for  the 


CANIS  IN   PILESEPL  137 

future  ;  and  now  I'll  go  and  puff  out  my  iniquities  in  a  •weed." 

On  which  he  beat  a  retreat,  aud  drew  himself  rather  hastily 
out  of  fire. 

"  You  are  a  clever  dog.  but  you  don't  blind  me,  Master  Syd, 
nor  get  over  ire  either,  if  I  can  find  a  way  out  of  this  cursed 
hole  on  any  other  side  ! "  said  his  father  under  his  breath,  by 
way  of  parting  shot.  "  Now,  Matilda,"  viciously,  "  I  advise 
you  to  go  and  put  yourself  under  the  hands  of  that  old  fumbler 
of  yours.  She  takes  an  hour  to  make  you  the  most  of  a  scare- 
crow of  any  woman  in  Milltown,  and  you  have  not  much  more 
before  you." 

"  You  do  say  the  most  disagreeable  things,  Colonel !  "  cried 
poor  Mrs.  Lowe,  hurrying  aimlessly  about  the  room. 

Her  husband's  sarcasms  acted  on  her  nervous  system  like 
wind  on  a  heap  of  chaff,  and  her  thoughts,  never  remarkable 
for  clearness  nor  precision,  became  utterly  chaotic  when  he 
took  it  into  his  head  to  gibe  and  taunt ;  which  was  the  reason 
why  he  did  so. 

Having  thus  set  his  son's  blood  on  fire  and  turned  his  wife's 
brains  upside  down,  Colonel  Lowe  went  off  on  his  own  side  to 
the  library,  where  he  took  a  sheet  of  paper  and  read  over  an 
elaborate  calculation  between  a  long  row  of  figures  on  the  one 
side,  and  a  very  small  item,  taken  from  his  banker's  book,  on 
the  other.  It  was  evidently  an  unpleasant  process,  for  he 
frowned  over  it  heavily,  bit  his  cleanly-trimmed,  filbert-shaped 
nails  as  if  to  gain  inspiration,  and  several  times  he  swore.  This 
was  an  accomplishment  in  which  the  gallant  Colonel,  whose 
pride  was  in  his  inherited  gentlehood,  was  notoriously  proficient. 

"  Money  I  must  have  ;  but  that  cursed  mud  ! "  he  said,  evi- 
dently with  no  kind  of  misgiving  that  the  mud  itself  might 
have  other  views  of  direction;  evidently  with  but  the  one 
difficulty,  that  of  stooping  his  proud  head  with  a  good  grace 
and  picking  up  the  riches  lying  at  his  feet. 

This  was  not  exactly  the  estimate  in  which  Mr.  Hamley  held 
his  fair  young  cousin,  nor  the  future  for  which  he  had  secretly 
destined  her  ;  not  exactly  the  estimate  in  which  she  held  her- 
self as  she  stood  before  the  pier  glass  in  her  room,  radiant  in 
the  Avhite  silk  and  pearl  ornaments  with  which  she  hoped  to 
charm  Sydney  Lowe's  father  and  mother,  aud  win  their  hearls 
to  favour. 


138  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

Evidently  tlie  task  these  young  people  had  set  before  them- 
selves was  of  supreme  difficulty.  On  the  one  hand  stood  the 
pride  of  the  gentleman,  on  the  other,  the  pride  of  money  ;  and 
neither  seemed  likely  to  give  way.  Colonel  Lowe  thought  no 
girl  too  good  for  Syd ;  Mr.  Hamley  thought  no  man  good 
enough  for  Dora.  Colonel  Lowe  had  decided  that  his  son 
should  redeem  the  tottering  fortunes  of  his  house ;  Mr.  Ham- 
bly  had  determined  that  his  cousin  should  marry  no  one  whose 
alliance  was  not  of  so  splendid  a  kind  as  to  compensate  him 
for  her  loss.  Each  held  the  other  infinitely  beneath  him ;  and 
when  birth  said  "  mud,"  money  answered  "beggary." 

If  there  had  been  only  the  Colonel  to  soften,  things  might 
have  had  a  better  outlook.  Needs  must  when  the  day  of  need 
comes  ;  but  what  was  the  influence  that  could  move  Mr.  Ham- 
ley  1  Dora  knew  of  none.  Wherefore  it  was,  that  believing 
the  Lowe  finances  to  be  as  flourishing  as  they  looked,  and  im- 
agining that  the  Colonel's  consent  was  the  only  thing  to  make 
the  affair  a  brilliant  success,  caring  nothing  for  Mr.  Hamley 
though  much  for  what  she  got  out  of  Abbey  Holme,  she  had 
done — what  she  had  done.  Had  she  known  that  Cragfoot  was 
mortgaged  from  kitchen  to  garret ;  that  Sydney  had  not  six- 
pence because  his  father  had  not  a  shilling;  and  that  her  dower 
was  part  of  the  speculation,  even  with  her  lover — well,  matters 
would  have  been  different,  that  is  all ! 

There  was  nothing  very  noticeable  about  the  dinner-party. 
It  was  much  like  any  other  where  the  host  does  not  hold  his 
guests  as  first-class,  and  therefore  permits  himself  to  be  conde- 
scending to  some  and  unduly  familiar  to  others.  For  even 
gentlemen  allow  themselves  these  pranks  sometimes.  Not  the 
best  kind,  granted  ;  but  the  gentlemen  whose  consecration  has 
come  from  circumstance  only,  not  by  nature ;  men,  may  be  the 
sons  of  a  long  line  of  well-endowed,  who  have  places,  and  that 
shadowy  substance  called  a  stake ;  men  who  have  been  at 
public  schools  with  Oxford  or  Sandhurst  to  follow ;  who  know 
how  to  come  into  a  room  with  grace  and  to  meet  a  social  dif- 
ficulty with  tact ;  who  speak  with  a  pure  pronunciation  and 
accurate  grammar ;  read  French  and  the  classics,  Balzac,  Hor- 
ace, and  the  like  with  ease  ;  who  ride  well  to  bounds  ;  shoot 
right  and  left  flying;  play  billiards,  and  fence,  and  do  all  that 
gentlemen  should  do  ;  but  men  whose  inordinate  pride  of  race, 


CANIS  IN  PRJSEPL  139 

pride  of  caste,  and  pride  of  person,  have  stifled  the  real  hu- 
manity in  them,  and  who,  in  idealising  selfishness  have  degraded 
nobleness.  These  are  the  men  who,  because  they  are  Gentle- 
men of  England,  think  themselves  patented  kings  of  all  other 
races  and  all  lower  conditions.  Kings  ?  If  tyranny  to  the 
weak,  insolence  to  the  inferior,  contempt  for  all  differences,  if 
this  constitutes  kingship,  then  was  Colonel  Lowe  of  Cragfoot  a 
royal  man  — pf  a  kind.  Consequently  adinner  party  which  con- 
sisted of  a  rich  parvenu  and  his  plebeian,  if  pretty,  relation  ;  the 
rector,  respectable  and  a  gentleman,  but  possessing  only  a  scant- 
ling of  brains  according  to  the  estimate  of  a  clever  reprobrate 
whose  predilections  were  for  "life  ;  "  the  medical  man  who,  as 
a  "  professional,"  was  of  small  account ;  two  common  place 
mediocrities  like  the  Collinsons  :  and  two  queer,  enthusiastic. 
Radicals,  free  thinkers,  woman's  rights  people,  and  who  knows 
what  absurdities  besides,  like  Dr.  Fletcher  and  his  sister,  was 
not  a  dinner-party  tor  which  he  put  on  his  best  breeding  nor 
brought  out  his  best  wine. 

Nobody  however  cared  much  about  the  Colonel,  nor  his 
nicer  shades  of  manner.  Country  friends  have  that  kind  of 
indifference  for  each  other  which  is  born  of  perfect  familiarity  ; 
and  it  a  man  is  known  to  have  a  "  nasty  way  with  him  "  on 
occasions,  when  those  occasions  arise  and  his  peculiarity  is 
made  evident,  nothing  more  is  said  than  that  he  "  showed  him- 
self off,"  or  Miis  fit  was  on  him,"  or  "he  was  nastier  than 
usual  last  evening."  Of  the  two  from  Abbey  Holme,  Dora  was 
happy  because  she  looked  pretty  and  knew  that  she  shone  out 
like  a  star" in  the  midst  of  the  faded  elders,  not  excepting  even 
Miss  Fletcher,  noble  of  look  and  of  true  queenliness  of  bearing 
as  she  was— but  then  she  was  past  forty,  and  did  not  know 
how  to  dress  ;  and  Mr.  Hamley  was  happy  because  Dora  was 
there  and  Mrs.  Hamley  was  not.  The  Burrodailes  were  glad 
to  spend  an  evening  out  of  their  own  house.  They  were  of 
the  jovial  order  of  pavson!»ou<J  in  a  mitigated  way,  and  thought 
life  was  given  as  much  for  enjoyment  as  for  work;  and  Dr. 
Fletcher  and  his  sister  took  their  part  patiently  in  what  they 
considered  a  personal  sacrifice  to  the  claims  of  a  long  acquaint- 
ance, and  which  had  promised  more  pleasure  than  it  had  ful- 
filled in  the  disappointed  expectation  of  meeting  Reginald 
Kemball's  daughter. 


140  "WHAT  WOFLT)  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

Only  the  Colonel's  own  family  understood  the  run  of  the  un- 
dercurrent of  which  the  company  at  large  saw  nothing  but  the 
surface.  They  knew  that  his  humour  was  insolent  in  its  very 
jocularity,  and  that  the  more  familiar  his  manner  the  more 
contemptuous  his  feeling.  And  the  knowledge  was  enough  to 
make  Mrs.  Lowe's  naturally  cold  and  nervous  manners  more 
than  usually  uncomfortable,  giving  her  the  appearance  of  being 
personally  offended  with  all  her  guests  save  Mr.  Borrodaile,  to 
whom  she  addressed  herself  almost  exclusively  because  he  was 
long-winded  and  perorated,  and  liked  to  talk  better  than  to 
listen.  As  for  Sydney,  knowing  that  every  word  and  look  was 
watched,  he  became  so  much  on  his  guard  towards  Dora  that 
he  piqued  her  for  a  moment  into  evident  displeasure.  And 
this  betrayed  a  greater  amount  of  intimacy  than  even  the  dimples 
and  the  blush  which  broke  out  suddenly  over  her  face  when 
the  young  man  took  her  hand  under  the  table,  and  squeezed  it 
with  more  fervour  than  Mr.  Hamley  would  have  quite  liked, 
had  he  known. 

All  of  which  the  Colonel  saw  and  noted,  and  made  his  future 
game  thereon. 

After  the  ladies  had  retired  and  the  gentlemen  had  drawn 
close,  Colonel  Lowe,  who  had  been  taking  his  wine  freely, 
turning  to  Mr.  Hamley  who  had  been  taking  his  freely  too, 
said  with  a  laugh  that  might  have  meant  anything,  from  honest 
admiration  to  the  profoundest  insolence  : 

"  That  girl  of  yours  grows  prettier  every  day,  Hamley." 

Mr.  Hamley's  eyes  glistened.  He  threw  back  on^lappel  of 
his  coat,  and  smiled  the  proprietor's  smile  of  proud  humility 
which  deprecates  while  it  accepts. 

"  She's  well  enough  ;  she'd  pass  in  a  crowd,"  he  said,  waving 
his  large  hand  with  its  big  diamond  flashing  in  the  light;  "  but 
she's  better  than  pretty,  Colonel — she's  good." 

"  Good  !  "  echoed  Colonel  Lowe  ;  "  who  cares  about  women 
heing  good  1  All  we  want  is,  tHat  they  should  be  pretty  and 
love  us  when  we  ask  them.  No  woman  is  good  who  is  worth 
her  salt — such  salt  as  it  is  !  " 

"  I  must  beg  to  differ  with  you,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  senten- 
tiously.  "  I  think  ladies  should  be  very  good  to  enable  them 
to  encounter  their  little  temptations  and  bear  their  little 
crosses ;  ladies,  when  they  are  weak,  do  a  great  deal  of  harm." 


CANLS   IN  PR^ESEH.  Ul 

"  There  I  meet  you,"  said  Colonel  Lowe  with  a  laugh  : 
"  women,  when  they  are  weak  and  brainless,  are  I  grant  you 
the  deuce  and  all ;  but  your  niece  is  not  that,  I  talce  it." 

"  She  is  not  my  niece  ;  Miss  Drummond  is  only  my  cousin," 
said  Mr.  Hamley.  "  I  cannot  think  why  you  should  all  say 
she  is  my  niece  !  From  the  commences  ent  it  has  always  been 
your  niece  here  and  your  niece  there,  cunfound  it !  in  spite  of 
all  I  could  say  to  the  contrary." 

"  So  1 — your  cousin  is  she  ?  Mrs.  Hamley  is  trustful,"  said 
the  Colonel  dryly. 

"  Miss  Drummond  is  as  valuable  to  Mrs.  Hamley  as  to  my- 
self;  she  is  Mrs*  Hamley'sjngbt  hand  and  mine  too,"  said  Mr. 
Hamley  in  a  distinct  voice.  "  Mrs.  Hamley  enjoys  but  poor 
health,  as  perhaps  you  know,  and  Miss  Drummond  is  quite  the 
angel  of  the  house,  if  1  may  say  so  without  ,oli'euce  to  Mr. 
Borrodaile." 

"Ah!  that  is  very -nice,"  said  Colonel  Lowe.  "Quite  the 
right  sort  of  thing  for  an  adopted  daughter." 

Mr.  Hamley  frowned;  but  he  drank  a  glass  o.f  wine,  and 
therefore  made  no  answer. 

"  Still,"  continued  the  Colonel  in  a  meditative  kind  of  way, 
"  the  more  valuable  she  is  to  you  now,  the  more  you  will  miss 
her  when  she  leaves  you." 

"  I  was  not  aware  that  Miss  Drummond  entertained  the  in- 
tention of  leaving  us,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  stiffly. 

"  No  ?  Why,  you  cannot  expect  to  keep  a  pretty  creature 
like  that  always  by  her  mother's  side,  can  you  1 "  laughed 
Colonel  Lowe.  "  You  will  be  losing  her  some  day  when  Prince 
Prettyman  make  his  appearance." 

Mr.  Hamley's  face  flushed ;  Sydney's  turned  pale. 

"  I  don't  know  anything  about  Prince  Prettyman,"  he  said ; 
"but  what  I  do  know  is,  that  I  have  never  yet  laid  eyes  on  the 
man  I  would  choose  to  give  her  to.  Fact  is,  I  care  nothing 
about  her  marrying.  She  has  no  call  to  marry  while  Abbey 
Holme  has  a  roof  to  its  rooms  and  a  fire  in  its  kitchen.  Who 
would  be  as  good  to  her  as  we  are  1  who  would  treat  her  as  so 
much  the  lady  1  She  is  happier  now  than  she  would  be  else- 
where, and  there's  time  enough  before  her."  He  spoke  warmly, 
wiping  his  upper  lip  more  than  once ;  and  the  Colonel  looked 
at  him  curiously,  as  if  trying  to  read  the  man's  inner  thought. 


142  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  Yes,  that  is  all  very  well  as  a  matter  of  sentiment,  I  dare 
say,"  he  said ;  "  but  you  surely  don't  intend  to  prevent  her 
marrying  if  a  suitable  occasion  offers  ! — a  gentleman  of  good 
blood,  say  " 

"  Good  blood  !— good'fiddlesticks  ! "  interrupted  Mr.  Hamley 
coarsely.  "  Good  blood  makes  as  bad  a  job  of  life  as  bad  blood 
does,  and  sometimes  a  precious  sight  worse.  I  would  refuse 
the  highest  lord  in  the  land  if  I  did  not  think  him  good  enough 
for  her." 

"  I  should  have  thought  a  lord,  not  quite  the  highest  in  the 
land,  might  have  been  considered  Miss  Drummoud's  e^ual," 
said  Colonel  Lowe  smoothly.  »  . 

"  Look  here,  Colonel,  I'm  a  self-made  man,  I  am,"  said  Mr. 
Hamley,  moving  his  chair  sideways  to  the  table  and  thrusting 
out  his  legs  ;  "  and  I'm  used  to  price  things  by  value  and  not 
by  name.  Lord  or  no  lord,  I  know  Miss  Drummond's  figure, 
and  I  tell  you  he'll  have  to  weigh  pretty  heavy  who  d  come  up 
to  it  and  get  my  yes." 

"  But  if  you  did  like  the  man  and  the  match  1 "  pressed  the 
Colonel.  "  You  would  then,  I  suppose,  make  the  running 
smooth  for  the  young  people  ? — you  would  not  send  her  to  her 
husband  empty-handed  ? " 

Mr.  Hamley  took  it  all  in  at  a  glance.  He  sat  upright  in  his 
chair  planted  his  feet  firmly,  flung  back  both  lappels  this  time, 
and  looked  at  Colonel  Lowe  steadily  with  another  steady  look 
at  Sydney  ;  handsome  faces  both  of  them,  each  in  its  own  way, 
but  botli  bad — the  one  reckless  and  the  other  shifty.  Then  he 
sai-1  in  a  slow,  ponderous  voice  as  if  he  was  giving  judgment  on 
the  bench  :  "  I  desire  it  should  be  distinctly  understood  - -dis- ' 
tincfely  understood — that  I  would  not  give  Miss  Drummond 
a  brass  farthing  if  she  married.  What  I  shall  do  for  her  if 
she  remains  single,  and  continues  to  act  as  she  has  done  to- 
waids  Mrs.  Hamley  and  myself,  is  another  matter.  But  the 
,  man  who  wants  to  be  her  husband  will  have  to  wait  for  my 
death  if  he  wants  to  step  into  my  shoes ;  and  then  I  don't  say 
they'll  fit.  Not  during  my  life  will  he  touch  my  money, 
married  or  single." 

"That's  explicit,"  said  Colonel  Lowe  with  a  sneer. 

"  Yes,  that's  explicit  if  you  choose  to  call  it  so,"  echoed  Mr. 
Burnley.  "I'll  have  no  fortune-hunters  nibbling  around  me, 
Oolonel ;  you  may  take  your  oath  of  that." 


CAN1S  IN  ?R£SEtt.  US 

He  said  this  in  such  a  loud  voice  that  it  broke  into  the  con- 
versation which  Dr.  Wickhara  was  holding  wijth  Henry  Fletcher 
respecting  one  James  Garth,  a  yeoman  in  difficulties  whose 
land  Mr.  Hamley  was  wanting. 

"Who  talks  of  fortune-hunters?"  said  Dr.  Fletcher  lazily. 
"  Are  there  any  in  Milltown  t " 

"  Perhaps  you  are  one  yourself,  and  can  answer  your  own 
question,"  said  Colonel  Lowe.  "Who  knows?  you  may  be 
Hamley's  standing  bete  noire,  Fletcher.  We  all  know  you 
admire  Miss  Drummond." 

"  She  is  very  pretty,  and  one  likes  the  young  creatures  one  has 
seen  grow  up,"  said  Dr.  Fletcher. 

"  Now  Fletcher,  for  heaven's  sake  don't  you  interfere !  I  hate 
to  hear  the  ladies  of  one's  own  neighbourhood  discussed  in 
public  as  if  they  were  so  many  servant-girls-,"  cried  Sydney 
fiercely.  "  It  is  such  vilely  bad  form,  I  cannot  understand  how 
any  gentleman  can  allow  it ! " 

"  I  agree  with  you.  It  is  bad  taste,  and  not  my  way  gener- 
ally," answered  Dr.  Fletcher  in  the  manner  of  an  apology. 

"I  am  much  indebted  to  Mr.  Sydney  Lowe  for  his  considera- 
tion," sneered  Mr.  Hamley.  "  But  some  affairs  are  best  dis- 
cussed in  public  when  the  time  is  ripe,  that  there  may  be  no 
doubt  remaining  in  the  neighbourhood.  And  that  Miss  Drum- 
mond will  have  no  fortune  if  she  marries  during  M.rs.  Hamley's 
life-time,  with  Mrs.  Hamley  needing  of  her  daily,  cannot  be 
known  too  far  and  wide." 

"  Let  us  trust  that  the  fowls  of  the  air,  not  to  say  the  beasts 
of  tiie  field,  will  carry  the  secret  to  all  whom  it  may  concern. 
Fletcher,  Wickham,  both  of  you — do  you  hear  ? — you  are  not 
to  make  love  to  Miss  Drummond.  She  is  la  fie  defendue  of 
Abbey  Holme,  and  Mr.  Hamley's  motto  is  '  canis  in  prjesepi.' " 

Colonel  Lowe  said  this  in  a  loud  voice,  with  perfect  breeding 
as  to  accent,  inflection,  gesture ;  but  his  smile  and  his  eyes  were 
not  pleasant  to  look  at,  and  Dr.  Wickham,  bending  his  head, 
said  in  a  half-whisper  to  Henry  Fletcher,  "  Mephistopheles,  by 
Jove ! " 

Sydney  was  white  with  rage.  He  lool^d  first  at  his  father 
and  then  at  Mr.  Hamley,  and  seemed  only  with  the  strongest 
effort  to  prevent  an  outburst.  No  higher  motive  of  restraint 
than  "at  his  own  table"  prevented  him.  Still,  we  may  be 


t44          "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

thankful  for  any  curbs  at  mad  moments  ;  and  that  Sydney 
Lowe  was  prevented  from  striking  his  father  and  flying  at  the 
throat  of  his  guest  by  a  mere  consideration  of  conventional 
politeness  was  so  much  to  the  good  of  general  morality.  When 
we  cannot  have  gold  we  must  be  content  with  brass  ;  and  paste 
answers  'the  same  purpose  as  diamonds,  except  for  analysis. 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  mean  with  your  foreign  tongues," 
said  the  rich  brewer  tossing  off  his  wine  and  smacking  his  lips 
after  it.  "  I  never  had  much  schooling  in  my  days  ;  and  all  I 
know  about  mottoes  is  that,  when  I  married  Mrs.  Hamley  and 
set  up  my  carriage  and  a  livery,  I  took  for  mine  '  Victrix  for- 
tunse  sapientia,'  which  they  tell  me  means  '  Wisdom  conquers 
fortune.'  And  so  I  say,  and  so  " — with  a  roll  of  aggressive 
self-satisfaction  in  his  voice  and  manner — "I  have  always 
found  it." 

"  It  is  a  motto  that  holds  good  for  two,"  said  Sydney  in- 
solently. 

"  No  doubt,  no  doubt,"  returned  Mr.  Hamley,  sticking  his 
thumb  into  his  arm-hole  as  was  his  favourite  gesture,  and  play- 
ing noisily  with  his  fingers  on  his  chest,  while  with  his  elbow 
on  the  table  and  leaning  back  in  his  chair  he  helped  himself 
again  to  wine.  "But  when  you  can  catch  a  weasel  asleep, 
Mr.  Sydney,  you  have  done  the  trick — hey  1  When  Greeks 
meet  then  comes  the  tug  of  war.  Doesn't  somebody  say  that  ? 
I  believe  it's  in  a  book." 

"  Very  true,"  said  Colonel  Lowe  gravely ;  "  but  we  are  not 
Greeks  at  Milltown,"  with  a  sly  look  to  his  son.  "  Gentlemen  " 
— looking  round  the  table —  "  you  seem  to  be  taking  no  wine. 
No  !  shall  we  th^n  join  the  ladies  1 " 

"  And  apologise  to  Miss  Drummond  for  having  committed 
the  unpardonable  offence  of  making  her  the  subject  of  our  dis- 
cussions," said  Sydney  with  a  dark  look. 

"  Right,"  echoed  Dr.  Fletcher. 

"  Save  your  breath  to  cool  your  porridge,  gentlemen,"  said 
Mr.  Hamley  with  undisguised  insolence.  "  Miss  Drummond 
has  need  of  no  man's  protection  where  /  am !  " 

"  Von  should  have  fulfilled  your  functions  better  just  now," 
sneered  Sydney  ;  and  Mr.  Hamley,  not  to  be  outdone,  turned 
his  head  just  as  he  was  leaving  the  room,  and  said,  "  Pass  that 
on  to  the  Colonel,"  as  he  swaggered  through  the  hall. 


CANIS    IN  PRjESEPI.  146 

In  the  drawing-room,  because  lie  was  a  little  flushed  with 
wine  and  a  great-  deal  excited  by  wrath,  Sydney  paid  Dora  the 
most  marked  attention,  and  seemed  disposed  to  set  everything 
at  defiance — his  father,  Mr.  Hamley,  the  opinion  of  the  world, 
and  possibilities.  It  was  by  no  means  his  best  policy  ;  but  he 
was  too  angry  to  be  politic.  Besides,  he  had  by  nature  a  large 
share  of  that  kind  of  feminine  unreasonableness  which  cares 
mure  for  the  indulgence  of  its  momentary  spite  than  the  fur- 
therance of  its  views  by  self-control ;  and  if  he  could  strike  to- 
day he  did  not  look  forward  to  being  struck  in  return  to-morrow. 
And  because  Colonel  Lowe,  too,  was  given  up  for  the  time  to  one 
of  his  haunting  demons,  and  because  he  wanted  to  annoy  Mr. 
Hamley  and  to  punish  him  for  his  insolence  in  daring  to  hold 
his  own  against  a  gentleman's  desire,  he  paid  Dora  as  much  at- 
tention in  his  way  as  did  his  son ;  and  both  together  bewildered 
and  somewhat  disturbed  that  young  lady,  though  they  enchanted 
her  too.  Or  rather,  they  would  have  enchanted  her  had  she 
been  left  in  peace.  But  Mr.  Hamley  had  no  intention  of  leav- 
ing her  in  peace.  He  drew  a  chair  close  to  hers,  and  no 
stratagems  nor  inducements  could  tempt  him  to  leave  it.  He 
mounted  guard  over  her  by  his  looks  ;  a  black  and  savage 
guard  ;  and  though  he  took  no  active  hostile  part  against  the 
compliments  and  pretty  speeches  which  Sydney  and  his  father 
showered  like  fireworks  over  her,  yet  he  let  them  see  plainly 
enough  that  they  were  not  to  his  liking,  and  made  her  under- 
stand that  what  she  accepted  now  she  would  have  to  pay  for 
afterwards. 

He  spoke  to  her  himself  frequently,  interrupting  the  two 
men  rudely,  with  a  fierce  and  familiar  manner  of  ownership 
that  nearly  maddened  Sydney — a  manner,  too,  strangely  at 
variance  with  the  artificial  and  lumbering  formalities  of  his 
usual  company  habits. 

Dora,  who  had  not  the  mot  d'enigme,  was  at  a  loss  to  under- 
stand its  true  meaning.  She  did  her  best  to  steer  clear  with 
her  usual  clever  temporizing  ;  but  she  failed.  For  every  smile 
and  blush  and  pretty  acceptance  of  gallant  words  from  father 
or  son  Mr.  Hamley  spoke  to  her  savagely  ;  for  every  deprecat- 
ing look  to  him  and  sweet-voiced  endeavour  to  join  him  into 
the  talk,  Colonel  Lowe  laughed  disagreeably,  or  Sydney  pressed 
her  foot  beneath  the  chair  with  a  savage  pressure  which  it  was 
J 


146  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOUJDO,  LOVE  ?  " 

wonderful  Mr.  TIamley  did  not  see.  Still,  all  this  turmoil 
excited  her  vanity,  and  pleased  it.  To  see  herselt  the  battle- 
ground, as  it  were,  of  these  three  men,  was  charming  to  her; 
and  she  felt  quite  like  a  little  Queen  of  Beauty  sitting  on  the 
dais  and  watching  the  tilters  in  the  field  below.  She  had  never 
come  out  so  prominently  before  ;  and  the  other  ladies  of  the 
party  looked  on,  and  either  wondered  what  it  betokened,  or  re- 
sented the  fuss  being  made  with  her,  according  to  their  own 
pretensions  and  private  moods.  As  for  poor  Mrs.  Lowe  the 
whole  thing  was  a  mystery  from  beginning  to  end ;  and  she 
had  but  one  intelligible  thought  connected  with  it,  that  the 
Colonel  was  more  than  ordinarily  disagreeable,  and  that  she 
wished  he  would  not  lead  Syd  into  mischief. 


PAYING  THE  iiiLL,  147 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

PAYING  THE  BILL. 

T  last  the  evening  which,  seemed  interminable  to  more 
than  one,  for  the  dinner  had  not  been  a  success,  came 
to  an  end,  and  the  guests  melted  away  as  they  do, 
whether  they  melt  by  degrees  or  with  a  rush.  "  Sic 
transit "  was  Dora's  plaintive  sentiment  as  she  wrapped  her- 
self in  her  ermines  and  managed  to  make  hersejf  look  even 
prettier  than  ever,  though  she  put  her  unspoken  lament  into 
more  homely  language.  Now,  too,  that  the  excitement  was 
over,  she  was  beginning  to  fear  the  consequences.  It  was  the 
bad  quarter  of  an  hour  when  the  bill  was  to  be  presented.  To 
be  sure,  Mr.  Hamley  had  always  been  good  and  kind  to  her, 
but  that  was  because  she  had  always  been  meek  and  obedient 
to  him.  She  was  a  wise  little  girl  in  her  generation,  and  knew 
that  more  than  half  the  love  given  to  us  is  because  we  please, 
not  because  we  are  worthy.  And  she  was  perfectly  aware  of 
the  fact  that  her  tenure  at  Abbey  Holme,  even  now  at  this 
day,  depended  solely  on  the  amount  of  use  and  pleasure  of 
which  she  coult.l  be  to  her  employers.  For  were  they  not  her 
employers?  she  used  to  ask  herself  with  cynical  disdain  of  the 
sham  she  made  it  her  life's  business  to  practise.  There  were 
times  when  even  she,  Dora  Drummond,  took  the  truth  in  her 
hand  and  confessed  it. 

She  knew  now  the  task  lying  before  her ;  and  thrusting  back 
into  her  heart  all  her  gratified  pride,  and  all  the  sweeter  hope 
which  this  strange  evening  had  aroused  in  her,  bent  to  her  yoke 
with  easy  grace  habitual  to  her,  and  prepared  to  quench  the 
fire  and  still  the  storm. 

For  her  initial  apology  she  looked  up  into  her  cousin's  face 

and  smiled  tenderly  as  innocent  of  all  offence,  so  soon  as  they 

•were  shut  up  in  the  carriage  alone.     He  met  her  flattering  little 

look  with  a  close  mouth  and  hard  eyes.  .  He  was  grim  and 

angry. 


148  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  I  hope  you  enjoyed  your  evening  ? "  he  said  abruptly, 
after  they  had  been  silent  for  some  time. 

"  Yes,  I  did,"  she  answered  pleasantly.     "  Did  you  ?" 

"Not  at  all."  He  spoke  with  savage  decision.  "I  never 
enjoyed  myself  less." 

"1  am  so  sorry,  dear!"  said  Dora  sympathetically.  She 
seldom  called  Mr.  Hamlcy  dear,  and  only  when  they  were  alone. 
She  had  her  reasons  for  keeping  on  distant  personal  terms  with 
him,  and  it  was  a  sign  that  she  had  to  put  out  all  her  strength 
when  her  address  became  affectionate. 

"Humph  !  you  did  not  look  like  being  sorry  for  anything,  I 
think,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  frowning. 

"  I  did  not  see  you  were  uncomfortable,  else  I  should  have 
been  'very  unhappy,"  she  answered. 

"  No !  you  saw  nothing  but  that  puppy  young  Lowe,  and  his 
beast  of  a  father,"  thundered  Mr.  Hamley.  "Because  they 
made,  a  fuss  with  you  1  suppose  you  got  your  head  turned. 
But  don't  mistake  them  or  me,  Dora.  I  told  them  down  stairs, 
as  plain  as  a  pikestaff,  that  I  would  not  give  you  a  brass  far- 
thing if  you  married — not  a  brass  farthing  !  And  so  I  flung 
their  dirty  fortune-bunting  manoeuvres  down  their  throats,  and 
I  wish  it  had  choked  them.  And  1  drunk  their  wine  when  I 
said  it.  If  /  have  taken  you  up  and  made  a  lady  of  you,  that 
says  nothing  for  nobody  else ;  and  by  the  Lord,  if  they  count 
on  that,  they  will  find  they  have  reckoned  without  their  host." 

"  I  don't  suppose  they  have  counted  on  anything  connected 
with  poor  little  me  at  all,"  said  Dora  quietly,  sliding  her  hand 
into  his.  "  You  are  vexing  yourself  for  nothing,  dear.  No 
one  wants  to  marry  me  with  fortune  or  without,  such  a  silly 
little  thing  as  I  am." 

"  And  if  they  did,  Dora,  what  then  ?  Would  you  go  1 "  he 
asked,  his  manner  still  savage  if  a  shade  less  brutal. 

She  laughed  lightly.  "  Not  unless  you  wanted  to  get  rid  of 
me."  she  answered,  looking  up  at  him  prettily. 

"Will  you  promise  to  wait  till  then?"  said  Mr., Hamley, 
seizing  her  arm  with  a  rude  gripe.  "Promise  me  that,  Dora, 
and  I'll  defy  them  all,  and  the  devil  at  their  head  !" 

"  Yes,"  Dora  answered,  raising  her  eyes  with  that  shy  yet 
candid  look  which  .she  knew  always  scored  honours  in  her 
favour. 


PAYING  THE  BILL.  149 

"  Then  you  will  never  go,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  in  a  softer  tone. 

"  I  am  very  happy  as  I  am,"  lisped  dear  Dora,  choking 
back  her  tears  and  pressing  his  hand  caressingly  with  her  little 
rosebud-like  fingers,  while  saying  to  herself :  "  Oh,  how  I  loathe 
you — how  Jewish  you  were  struck  dead  to-night !"  when  he, 
taking  up  his  grand  manner — lordly,  patronizing,  condescend- 
ing, yet  notr  unkindly — as  if  afraid  to  commit  himself  to  further 
sentiment,  answered  majestically,  "  You  ought  to  be.  I  have 
done  my  best  to  treat  you  as  the  lady,  and  if  you  weren't 
happy  with  all  I've  done  for  you*,  you'd  be  more  ungrateful  than 
I'd  like  to  think  !  " 

"  And  I  am  not  ungrateful,"  returned  Dora. 

"  I  don't  believe  you  are ;  ajid  we'll  prove  it  some  day  to 
those  two  hounds  yonder,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  as  they  drove  up 
to  the  door,  where  he  assisted  her  to  dismount,  as  his  phrase- 
ology went,  and,  offering  his  arm,  walked  with  her  in  state  to 
the  drawing-room. 

"  How  late  you  are !"  was  Mrs.  Hamley's  greeting,  mad'e  sourly. 

"  How  pretty  you  look,  Dora ! — like  Catskins  in  the  fairy 
tale  ! "  was  Patricia's. 

She  and  her  aunt  were  in  the  dimly-lighted  drawing-room, 
both  silent  and  both  weary.  If  the  evening  had  been  long  to 
the  guests  at  Cragfoot,  it  had  been  longer  to  the  ill-assorted 
inmates  of  Abbey  Holme.  Patricia  had  done  her  best  to  make 
things  go  smoothly,  by  which,  of  course,  it  came  about  that  she 
had  made  them  all  go  roughly.  She  had  loyally  set  out  by 
trying  to  please  her  aunt ;  which  was  the  sure  way  to  displease 
her  ;  especially  when  she  was  inclined  to  find  her  path  in  life 
more  than  usually  crooked,  as  it  was  to  night,  because  Dora 
and  Mr.  Hamley  had  left  her  to  herself  and  her  niece ;  and 
Mrs.  Hamley  had  felt  bound  to  improve  the  occasion,  and  give 
unpleasant  if  useful  lessons  on  humility  and  obedience,  which 
had  pained  the  poor  girl,  who  could  not  see  where  they  applied 
to  her,  nor  therefore  why  they  were  bestowed.  So  that  at  last^ 
after  several  abortive  efforts  on  Patricia's  part  to  find  the  clue 
that  could  guide  her  out  of  the  maze  of  mistakes  in  which  she 
was  wandering,  there  had  settled  down  between  them  a  dull, 
sad  silence  which  Mrs.  Hamley  resented  as  an  additional  offence, 
yet  would  not  break  on  her  own  side  nor  allow  Patricia  to  break 
on  hers. 


150  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO^LOVE  ?  " 

Tlie  fact  was,  the  mistress  of  Abbey  Holme  wanted  to  be 
amused  in  her  own  way  and  as  dear  Dora  would  have  amused 
her.  The  woman  who  would  not  suffer  that  the  best  of  the 
men  and  women  she  knew  should  hold  doubts  where  she  had 
certainties,  or  walk  to  the  right  when  she  chose  the  left,  was 
not  likely  to  submit  to  the  independent  action  of  a  girl  like 
Patricia ;  even  though  that  independent  action  was  for  her 
benefit.  Why  did  'she  ask  her  if  she  would  play  backgammon, 
and  not  wait  until  she  herself  had  proposed  it?  It  was  not 
her  place  to  propose  backgammon  or  anything  else.  What  she 
ought  to  have  done  was,  to  hold  herself  in  readiness  to  play  if 
she  was  invited,  and  then,  when  duly  bidden,  to  bring  the 
board  from  the  what-not  where  it  stood,  set  it  square  on  the 
little  velvet  table,  arrange  the  lamp  to  the  proper  focus,  and  do 
all  this  quietly,  without  strewing  sticks  and  straws  about  the 
room.  And  if  she  was  snubbed  for  clumsiness  or  noise,  as  it 
was  alniost  impossible  she  should  not  have  been,  she  ought  not 
to  have  taken  any  notice  save  by  silence  and  increased  docility. 
"  She  was  such  an  unmanageable  young  person,"  Aunt  Hamley 
had  been  thinking  all  the  evening  with  cumulative  bitterness. 

No  wonder,  then,  that  she  said  sourly  when  her  husband  and 
Dora  came  in  :  "  How  late  you  are !  "  her  tone  and  mannei 
telling  the  sense  of  injury  under  which  she  was  labouring. 

"  Why,  yes,  we  are  late,"  said  Dora,  looking  at  the  clock  on 
the  chimney-piece,  which  had  stopped,  and  speaking  with  her 
deprecating,  soothing  smile. 

"  You  must  have  been  singularly  well  amused,"  sneered  Mrs. 
Hamley. 

"  Quite  the  other  way,  Lady,  Ve  have  been  particularly  badly 
entertained,"  said  Mr.  Hamley. 

"  You  would  have  done  better  to  have  taken  my  advice  and 
have  stopped  at  home,"  she  replied  with  a  grim  laugh.  It 
comforted  her  to  think  that  they  bad  been  bored  as  well  as 
Jierself.  "  We  have  had  the  most  stupid  evening,  Patricia  and 
I — have  we  not,  Patricia  ] " 

"  Rather,"  said  Patricia  frankly.  "  We  have  not  got  on  very 
well  together." 

"  There,  I  told  you  so,"  cried  Mrs.  Hamley  with  a  look  that 
would  have  made  Dora  quake  had  it  been,  given,  to  her.  "  You 
are  candour  itself,  my  dear !  " 


PAYING  THE  BILL.  151 

"  Oh  !  it  is  always  better  to  tell  the  truth,"  said  unsuspecting 
Patricia. 

Dora  gave  her  one  glance,  and  Mrs.  Hamley  another.  Mr. 
Hamley  rubbed  his  hands  softly  and  smiled. 

"  I  cannot  say  I  am  sorry  for  you,"  continued  Mrs.  Hamley, 
turning  to  Dora.  "  You  see  all  you  have  got  for  your  greedi- 
ness for  pleasure,  you  two,  is  to  have  spent  a  stupid  evening 
yourselves  and  to  have  given  me  a  worse." 

"  But  you  know  you  always  prophesy  rightly,  dear,"  said 
Dora,  sitting  down  by  the  fire  and  close  to  Mrs.  Hamley,  with 
the  look  of  one  who  has  something  to  say. 

She  was  longing  to  go  up-stairs  to  be  alone  that  she  might 
think  over  it  all,  and  try  to  understand  her  position;  but  she 
knew  what  was  expected  of  her,  as  well  as  she  knew  the  terms 
of  her  holding ;  and  has  it  not  been  said  that  she  was  wise  in 
her  generation  ? 

"  That's  right,  Dora ;  I  am  moped  to  death.  Now  tell  me 
all  about  it,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  a  little  briskly. 

"  She'll  not  have  much  to  tell,"  growled  Mr.  Hamley  between 
his  teeth. 

"  Well,  I'll  do  what  I  can,"  Dora  answered  with  her  pleasant 
facile  sweetness  ;  and  then  began  an  account  of  the  dinner,  and 
Mrs.  Lowe's  cold,  and  Mrs.  Borrodaile's  hideous  crimson  gown, 
and  Miss  Fletcher's  familiar  manners  to  the  lady's  maid,  and 
Dr.  Fie  teller's  absence  of  mind  and  how  he  had  taken  salt  for 
sugar  and  mustard  with  his  mutton,  and  Dr.  Wickham's  round 
i-yes,  and  Mr.  Collinson's  dyed  moustache,  and  what  this  one 
said  and  that  one  did ;  till  the  grim  visages  waxed  smooth  and 
jocund,  and  more  than  once  the  two  wrathful  authorities  fairly 
laughed. 

In  the  midst  of  it  all  Patricia  took  her  candle  and  bade  them 
abruptly  good  night.  She  was  pale  and  looked  distressed. 
She  could  not  bear  to  listen  to  Dora's  ridicule.  To  have  just 
accepted  hospitality,  and  then  to  come  home  and  laugh  at 
those  who  had  given  it — to  wear  one  face  at  Cragfoot  and 
another  at  Abbey  Holme — Patricia's  honest  soul  rebelled  at 
the  hypocrisy  there,  the  ingratitude  here.  And  so,  unwilling 
to  blame  arid  equally  unwilling  to  be  false  to  her  own  sense  01 
right,  she  took  the  (as  it  seemed  to  her)  cowardly  pirt  of  flight 
rather  than  of  protest ;  and,  escaping  to  the  solitiu  e  f  her  o-.va 


152  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

room,  gave  her  aunt  an  opportunity  of  being  Shahrazad  in  her 
turn,  and  of  telling  them  of  all  that  "  odd  girl's"  misdemean- 
ours ;  whereat  the  three  condemned  and  condoled  in  concert. 

Safe  in"  the  solitude  of  her  own  room,  Patricia  wearied  herself 
again,  as  so  often  before,  with  her  one  standing  difficulty.  Be- 
tween the  two  opposing  duties  of  testifying  according  to  the 
truth  that  was  in  her,  or  silence  in  the  presence  of  her  superiors 
whom  her  testifying  only  annoyed  and  did  not  reform,  which 
was  she  to  follow  1  Ah  !  others  beside  Patricia  Kemball  have 
ere  now  stood  at  the  cross  roads,  and  not  known  which  way 
to  take  when  virtues  were  divergent  and  duties  incompatible  ! 
If  we  could  all  have  our  infallible  direction  ever  plain  before  us 
we  would  all  do  what  is  right ;  for  it. is  by  ignorance,  not  wil- 
fulness,  that  we  mostly  fail ;  and  even  when  we  have  gone  into 
the  deepest  waters,  and  are  at  our  worst,  we  have  drifted  into 
the  breakers  by  mischance  rather  than  made  intentional  ship- 
wreck. 

But  this  was  a  step  as  yet  beyond  Patricia.  To  her,  life  was 
still  in  the  stage  of  the  absolutes,  and  a  thing  was  right  or 
wrong — clearly,  crudely — without  softening  shade  or  modifying 
circumstance.  She  knew  nothing  of  those  delicate  little  dove- 
tails by  which  vice  can  be  fitted  into  the  mosaic-work  of  virtues, 
and  proved  by  reasoners  and  economists  to  be  the  very  thing 
that  was  wanted  ;  nothing  of  the  pigeon's  neck  quality  of  cir- 
cumstance through  which  lies  are  made  more  beautiful  than 
truth,  and  to  bow  the  knee  to  Baal  a  holier  deed  than  to  con- 
fess for  Israel. 

So  she  sat  and  wearied  herself,  while  Dora,  with  her  white 
satin  boots  shining  on  the  crimson  fire-stool,  and  her  white  silk 
dress  shining  on  the  crimson  firelight,  played  with  her  pearls, 
and  racked  her  brains  and  invention  as  she  lounged  in  the  prie- 
dieu  down-stairs ;  amusing  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hamley  with  her 
playful  sarcasms  and  dramatic  cleverness,  until  she  brought 
them  both  from  gloom  to  cheerfulness,  not  to  say  radiance. 
By  which  she  prevented  an  attack  of  ill-temper  that  would 
have  been  felt  in  the  remotest  recesses  of  the  house  and  by  the 
humblest  member  of  the  household  for  many  days,  and  thus 
contributed  just  so  much  to  the  general  stock  of  morality  and 
happiness. 

After  this  the  went  up-stairs,  and  only  Alice  Garth,  her 


PAYING  THE  BILL.  153 

maid,  saw  how  she  collapsed  as  soon  as  the  door  was  sh'ut 
between  her  and  the  house  to  which  she  acted. 

"  I  tell  you  I  did  right  ? "  was  her  defence  and  answer  when 
Patricia  expostulated  with  her  the  next  day.  "  I  did  no  one 
any  harm,  and  I  stopped  a  week's  misery  to  everybody ;  and 
what  is  that  but  good  work,  I  should  like  to  know  ? " 

"  Not  good  work  if  you  hurt  your  own  soul,"  said  Patricia. 

"  Soul ! — hurt  my  own  soul  1 — what  nonsense,"  Dora  cried 
scornfully.  "  My  opinion  is,  Patricia,  that  nothing  is  so  selfish, 
nothing  so  cruel,  as  that  thing  you  choose  to  call  sincerity.  I 
am  sure  if  I  was  always  thinking  of  my  dirty  little  soul  as  you 
are  of  yours,  I  should  go  mad — certainly  I  should  never  expect 
to  do  a  decently  civil,  not  to  talk  of  politic,  thing  again.  Don't 
talk  to  me  of  truth  and  honesty  ! — I  am  sick  of  the  very  words. 
Talk  rather  of  selfishness  and  cowardice  and  obstinancy  ;  con- 
fess these  when  you  refuse  to  help  in  setting  things  straight  or 
keeping  them  smooth,  and  then  I  will  believe  you." 

"  I  do  not  think  I  am  selfish  for  trying  to  be  true  to  my  own 
sense  of  right,  or  cowardly  for  refusing  to  tell  falsehoods,"  said 
Patricia. 

But  Dora  said,  "  You  are,  Patricia,"  so  decidedly  and  so 
crossly  that  the  girl  gave  up  the  point :  shaking  her  head  in 
deprecation,  but  keeping  silence,  not  caring  to  justify  herself 
afresh  in  Dora's  present  belligerent  mood. 

To  uphold  the  right  and  to  be  condemned  therefore,  while 
those  who  do  no  wrong  are  rewarded,  was  a  sorrow  and  perplexity 
not  peculiar  to  Patricia's  experience.  Has  life  ever  given  anght 
else  but  condemnation  to  those  who  maintain  a  standard  of 
truth  and  inner  nobleness  higher  than  the  popular  measure  in 
use  about  them  ?  Aristides  has  riot  been  the  only  man  ostracised 
simply  because  he  was  just;  nor  Socrates  the  only  sage  who 
has  had  to  be  effaced  because  he  taught  a  virtue  greater  than 
his  time.  Patricia  in  her  small  way  was  simply  repeating  the 
experience  of  such  as  these ;  and  there  are  many  living 
Patricias  at  this  moment  learning  the  same  hard  lesson  by 
heart,  and  bearing  the  same  heavy  burden  on  their  hands. 


"WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER 

DEMETER. 

tHERE  is  a  time  in  the  history  of  most  of  us,  while  young, 
when  the  mind  takes  a  sudden  awakening  and  we  enter 
into  a  new  order  of  thought.  We  cannot  always  say 
how  or  why  this  has  come  about ;  but  sometimes  we  do  know 
the  precise  moment  when  our  eyes  first  opened  to  the  higher 
truths,  and  can  state  how  it  was  that  the  current  of  our  inner 
life  was  changed.  We  can  single  out  the  one  from  whom  we 
received  the  ineffaceable  impress,  and  give  the  pattern  of  the 
altar  from  which  we  took  the  living  fire  that  kindled  our  own. 
Up  to  that  moment  we  had  been  waiting  or  wandering  ;  after 
then  we  knew  where  our  Mecca  stood,  and  set  our  faces  toward 
it. 

Such  a  moment  was  coming  for  Patricia.  While  her  uncle 
lived  she  had  had  no  need  of  extra  direction.  She  had  led,  «s 
has  been  said  more  than  once  before,  that  healthy  and  un- 
reflecting kind  of  existence  wherein  youth  grows  strongest  and 
loveliest,  but  wherein  is  no  conscious  mental  development 
because  no  spiritual  struggle.  She  had  never  known  the  doubt 
of  conflicting  duties,  nor  suffered  the  anguish  of  moral  uncer- 
tainty; the  law  under  which  she  had  lived  had  been  simple 
and  absolutt.',  and  no  subtle  Advocatus  Diaboli,  skilled  in  com- 
pound ethics,  had  held  a  brief  at  Barsands. 

But  now  at  Abbey  Holme  everything  was  changed,  and  her 
moral  standards  were  fluctuating  with  the  rest.  The  old  and 
the  new  had  come  into  collision,  and  her  soul  was  yearning  for 
an  authority  outside  itself  which  should  settle  her  difficulties 
and  help  her  to  fashion  her  life  anew  ;  an  authority  that  should 
show  her  how  to  order  herself  in  accord  with  her  present  con- 
ditions, and  yet  live  nobly  after  the  teaching  of  her  uncle. 

If  her  mind  was  out  of  tune,  "her  outward  existence  was  no 
more  harmonious  with  her  real  self.  Her  personal  freedom 
denied  threw  her  time  on  her  hands  ;  and,  though  she  was  top 


DBMETER.  155 

stt-^g-minded  to  allow  herself  to  mope,  and  too  healthy  to  fall 
ill  even  at  the  unwonted  seclusion,  the  unnatural  inaction  of 
hei  rife,  both  spirits  and  health  were  sorely  tried.  The  time 
thu«  flung  on  her  hands  hung  there  so  heavily  !  She  could  not 
filter  it,  hour  by  hour,  in  the  essentially  mindless  and  frivolous 
work  which  filled  up  Dora's  and  Mrs.  Hamley's  days  so  plea- 
santly if  less  than  profitably.  Indeed  her  fingers,  rough  and 
hard  even  yet  with  the  ropes  and  tar  of  the  Mermaid,  could  not 
conquer  those  mysterious  ins  and  outs  of  shuttles  and  needles 
which  occupied  them  as  gravely  as  if  the  results  were  of  real 
importance.  And  she  neither  admired  nor  coveted  those 
results  when  attained.  Neither  was  she  an  artist  by  education, 
whatever  she  might  be  by  nature.  She  had  no  available  know- 
ledge of  music ;  and  the  utmost  she  could  do  in  the  way  of 
what  Mr.  Hamley  called  performing  on  the  piano,  was  to 
scramble  over  a  simple  accompaniment  while  she  sang  her 
ballad  songs  in  her  sweet  and  fresh  young  voice,  as  untrained 
as  a  Swiss  peasant's.  Her  drawings  were  a  mere  school-girl's 
carefully  measured  copies  of  prints  and  the  like,  of  no  technical 
worth  whatsoever,  and  even  favouritism,  which  was  not  accorded 
to  her,  could  not  have  found  them  beautiful.  And  thus  it  came 
to  pass  that  Mrs.  Hamley  had  some  show  of  reason  in  her  fre- 
quent rebukes  administered  for  idleness — to  Patricia,  who  had 
so  lately  been  the  very  embodiment  of  activity.  And  when  she 
complained  that  this  uncomfortable  niece  of  hers  was  always 
either  doing  what  she  ought  not,  or.  doing  nothing  at  all,  she 
was  justified  by  the  outsides  of  things  if  scarcely  by  inner 
realities. 

However,  as  Patricia  had  sense  enough  to  see  that  she  was 
very  far  below  the  right  mark,  taking  Dora  as  her  standard, 
she  wished  to  raise  herself  up  to  that  mark  ;  and,  as  she  had 
brains,  she  desired  to  use  them.  She  wanted  to  learn  some- 
thing ;  she  was  very  vague  as  to  what;  now  that  she  had  time. 
She  wanted  to  make  herself  as  charming  and  cultured  as  Dora 
— that  pretty  piece  of  stamped  pewter  polished  to  look  like 
sterling  silver  ;  that  Hamley  model  of  feminine  perfection,  held 
up  to  her  at  all  times  and  in  all  ways  as  the  one  to  copy  and  to 
endeavour  to  approach  as  near  as  might  be.  So  she  began  to 
read  with  th§.  floundering  deeultoriness  of  the  eager  and  the 
untaught ;  and  Mrs.  Hamley  found  more  fault  than  before. 


156  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

To  be  sure,  Mosheim's  "  Ecclesiastical  History,"  for  example, 
\vbich  was  one  of  the  tough  pieces  of  literature  the  girl  under- 
took of  her  own  motion,  was  not  exactly'  the  best  beginning 
she  could  have  made.  It  was  creditable,  but,  as  Aunt  Hamley 
said,  she  might  have  started  with  something  less  ponderous 
and  more  serviceable  for  general  conversation  ;  something  that- 
won  Id  help  her  to  bear  her  part  in  society  rather  more  effec- 
tively than  at  present — Tennyson,  now,  or  Longfellow,  or  even 
Fronde  or  Macaulay,  or  anything  whatsoever  that  other  people 
knew  or  were  likely  to  talk  of;  but  Mosheim's  *'  Ecclesiastical 
History  " — who  ever  heard  of  a  girl  in  her  teens  attacking  such 
a  monstrous  bit  of  literature  as  that!  "  It  was  scarcely  femi- 
nine," said  Mrs.  Hamley  severely ;  and  she  was  not  quite  sure 
that  it  was  altogether  proper. 

Poor,  uneasy,  cross- cornered  soul  !  it  was  not  given  to  her  to 
applaud  any  one's  independent  action  ;  least  of  all  Patricia's  ; 
and  if  one  stanza  chanced  to  be  cut  off  her  Ballad  of  Burdens 
another  was  immediately  added,  so  that  the  tale  of  them  never 
lessened. 

.  Had  Patricia  gone  to  her  for  help  and  advice  in  her  new 
pursuits,  everything  would  have  been  smooth.  She  would 
have  accepted  her  confession  of  ignorance  and  request  for  in- 
struction as  so  much  tribute  to  her  own  superior  attainments ; 
for  Mrs.  Hamley  prided  herself  on  her  knowledge  and  her 
mind ;  she  would  have  been  very  careful  with  her,  very  pe- 
dantic, very  hard  to  please,  very  thorough  ;  but  she  would 
have  been  gratified.  She  would  have  put  her  to  the  elements 
like  a  little  child — probably  have  given  her  a  page  of  spelling 
and  a  sum  in  simple  addition  ;  but  she  would  have  liked  the 
child's  docility — for  Patricia  was  docile  though  also  independ- 
ent ;  her  love  of  managing  would  have  been  gratified  ;  and  she 
would  have  seen  some  of  the  best  points  of  the  girl's  character, 
while  some  of  the  worst  of  her  own  would  have  been  appeased. 
A  real  affection  might  have  sprung  up  between  them  over 
Murray  and  Hume  ;  and  "Auntie,  what  is  the  meaning  of 
this  1  " — "  Auntie,  please  explain  this  to  me,"  would  have 
been  a  continually  recurring  homage  paid  to  her  superiority 
which  would  have  soothed  and  flattered  her 

But  she  had  checked  Patricia  too  often  to  make  it  possible 
for  such  a  proposition  to  come  from  her.     Lacking  the  power 


DEMETER.  157 

of  insight  into  petty  humours,  taking  all  things  seriously,  and 
too  honest  for  tact  or  management,  the  girl  "had  accepted  her 
aunt's  moods  as  permanent  dispositions,  and  had  taken  to 
heart  the  need  of  effacing  herself,  as  Dora  had  said.  Not  in 
Dora's  way  of  self-effacement,  only  to  make  herself  the  better 
mirror,  the  exacter  shadow,  but  by  absolute  withdrawal  from 
sight  and  sound  ;  so  that  day  by  day  saw  her  more  in  her  own 
room  up-stairs.  and  more  silent  when  with  the  family.  And 
both  these  habits  annoyed  Mrs.  Hamley  "  beyond  expression." 
As  she  said  bitterly  to  Dora  half-a-dozen  times  a  day,  that  girl 
would  kill  her  before  she  had  done  with  her ! 

To  which  Dora  always  answered  dutifully :  "  Dear !  I  am 
so  sorry  for  you  !  She  is  trying  !  " 

Thus  Patricia  began  her  task  of  self-education  unguided  j 
and,  as  may  be  imagined,  she  did  not  make  much  headway, 
but  stumbled  about  among  the  "  hard  books  "  of  the  library — 
chiefly  dry  old  history — very  much  as  the  men  stumbled  about 
the  tombs  at  the  foot  of  the  Delectable  Mountains. 

One  day  she  was  in  the  grounds  by  herself.  It  was  about  a 
week  after  the  Lowe's  dinner  party,  and  Dora  was  at  home. 
She  had  caught  a  little  cold  on  that  famous  night,  and  Mr. 
Hamley  had  insisted  on  her  keeping  the  house.  Pe  did  not 
wish  to  see  her  in  the  enjoyment  of  bad  health  all  her  life,  he 
had  said  ;  and  the  sooner  she  commenced  to  take  care  of  her- 
self the  sooner  she  would  be  recovered. 

So  dear  Dora  had  nothing  for  it  but  to  smile  sweetly  and  say 
she  would  do  as  he  liked,  all  the  while  knowing  that  nothing 
Avas  the  matter  with  her,  that  Sydney  was  expecting  to  hear 
from  her,  and  that  a  letter  from  him  was  in  her  pocket  waiting 
a  safe  Mercury.  Presently,  while  Patricia  was  standing  on  a 
little  eminence  in  the  avenue,  facing  the  strong  north-west 
wind  with  a  kind  of  rapturous  delight,  as  if  it  was  an  old  friend 
with  whom  was  connected  the  glad  life  of  the  dear  past,  Dr. 
and  Miss  Fletcher  passed  through  the  lodge-gates,  she  coming 
expressly  to  see  the  new  girl  of  whom,  her  brother  had  reported 
BO  pleasantly. 

In  person  they  made  a  decided  contrast,  and  yet  they  were 
alike,  with  that  kind  of  family  likeness  which  depends  more 
on  harmony  of  expression  than  on  similarity  of  feature  or 
colour.  He  was  tall,  angular,  serious,  lean;  with  grizzled 


158  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

hair  and  leathery-brown  cheeks ;  a  man  who  looked  as  if  ne 
might  have  been*  a  monk  in  one  set  of  circumstances,  or  an 
Arab  chief  in  another.  She  was  tall,  too,  but  stout,  smiling, 
rather  short-breathed,  and  of  a  generous  kind  of  beauty  that 
had  almost  an  Italian  expression  in  it.  For  though  she  was 
past  forty,  she  was  handsome  even  now,  and  was  of  the  kind 
to  be  handsome  to  the  end.  People  wondered  how  it  was  that 
Catherine  Fletcher  had  never  married  ;  but  mothers  wondered 
more  how  it  was  that  not  having  married  she  should  under- 
stand children  and  young  people  as  she  did,  and  have  such  an 
accurate  sense  of  their  needs.  They  said  she  was  like  a  mother 
herself,  and  asked  each  other,  with  amazement,  how  had  she 
come  by  it  1  For  there  is  no  error  more  popular  than  the  be- 
lief that  motherhood  of  itself  gives  natural  insight,  save  that 
other — that  the  maternal  instinct  is  universal. 

Miss  Fletcher  was  one  of  those  women  who  are  consecrated 
by  nature  to  marriage  and  maternity  ;  and  yet  her  spinsterhood 
was  a  greater  gain  to  the  world  than  her  marriage  would  have 
been.  Had  she  been  a  wife  she  would  have  made  one  man 
happy,  and  she  would  have  been  the  wise  and  loving  mother 
of  probably  many  children.  But  she  would  have  concentrated 
within  the  four  walls  of  home  the  energy  and  intelligence  which 
now  found  their  larger  service  in  humanity.  As  it  was  she 
was  the  helper  of  all  who  needed;  a  kind  of  modern  Demeter, 
with  her  hands  full  of  gifts  and  her  lap  full  of  babies,  offering 
the  grace  of  her  womanhood  and  the  power'of  her  love  to  the 
poor  and  the  weak,  the  lonely  and  the  loveless  ;  a  democrat 
because  noble,  and  pitiful  because  strong.  Her  whole  being 
was  penetrated  through  and  through  with  sympathy.  Not 
sympathy  of  that  vague  and  graceful  kind  which  speaks  ten- 
derly of  suffering,  even  sheds  tears  when  it  hears  of  woes  and 
wants,  then  passes  on  to  its  own  individual  happiness  undis- 
turbed ;  but  sympathy  which  includes  active  help  at  the  cost 
of  personal  sacrifice,  sympathy  which  means  patience  with 
folly,  patience  with  ignorance,  with  prejudice,  with  selfish- 
ness, with  .impatience  even — the  hardest  effort  of  all ! — sym- 
pathy which  cares  for  the  real  good  ot  the  person  concerned, 
and  not  for  self-expression;  and  so  gets  less  credit  than  if  it 
contented  itself  with  talking  sweetly  of  Christian  charity, 
weeping  for  hypothetical  woes,  growing  indignant  at  the  in? 


DEMETER.  159 

justice  of  society  and  sorrowful  at  the  misfortunes  of  men  ;  and 
in  the  end  saving  itself  all  further  trouble  by  a  clever  delega- 
tion of  work  and  a  small  money  subscription. 

"  Good  morning,  Miss  Kemball ;  my  sister  has  come  to  see 
you,"  said  Dr.  Fletcher,  shaking  hands  with  Patricia  ;  and 
"  Good  morning,  I  am  glad  to  see  you,"  added  Miss  Irletcher 
with  her  kindly  smile  and  warm  grasp. 

Patricia's  face  brightened.  The  fresh  wind  had  given  her 
back  her  strong  free  look,  and  the  young  have  instincts  of 
strange  accuracy.  The  same  expression  came  into  her  eyes  as 
used  to  be  there  in  old  days,  when  her  uncle  spoke  to  her. 
Something  in  the  voice,  the  hand-press,  the  face  of  her  new 
acquaintance  struck  a  chord  that  vibrated  to  her  heart ;  and  a 
light  seemed  to  have  suddenly  burst  forth  that  turned  the  grey 
day  into  gold. 

Her  ready  responsiveness  made  the  elder  woman  smile.  She 
liked  this  bright,  tall,  handsome  girl  with  her  frank  eyes  and 
unconventional  address.  She  was  human  and  not  spoilt,  she 
thought.  Her  brother  had  prepared  her  for  a  "  candid,  un- 
tutored kind  of  young  person,  very  transparent  and  unaffected, 
but  apparently  as  wild  as  a  hawk ;"  but  she  had  not  expected 
to  see  anything  so  beautiful  in  person  or  so  innocently  affec- 
tionate in  manner.  She  had  moreover  her  own  reasons  lying 
in  the  far  past  for  a  natural  readiness  to  like  the  daughter  of 
Reginald  Kemball ;  and  as  they  walked  up  the  avenue  toge- 
ther, she  improvised  an  invitation  for  the  two  girls  for  that 
day,  wishing  to  see  more  of  Patricia  than  she  could  see  in  a 
visit,  and  thinking  that,  as  her  life  at  Abbey  Holme  could  not 
possibly  be  congenial  to  her,  perhaps  she  might  be  of  use  and 
help  to  make  it  pleasanter.  » 

"  Perhaps  she  might  be  of  use." 

This  was  the  law  by  which  Catherine  Fletcher  lived.  This 
queenly  kind  of  woman,  this  Demeter  of  modern  life,  held  her- 
self as  just  the  servant  of  her  race,  no  more,  and  found  in  that 
servauthood  her  happiness  and  her  honour. 

"  Yes,  1  shall  be  very  glad  indeed,"  said  Patricia,  "  if,"  with 
a  certain  hesitancy,  "  Aunt  will  let  me  go.  I  do  .not  think 
Dora  can  come  ;  she  has  a  cold,  poor  girl ;  so,"  very  sorrowfully, 
•far  more  sorrowfully  than  the  occasion  seemed  to  warrant, 
"  perhaps  Aunt  will  not  let  me  go  alone." 


1 60  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOtJ  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

Miss  Fletcher  looked  at  her  kindly.  She  felt  all  the  tyranny 
and  want  of  liberty  included  in  this  probable  prohibition  to  a 
girl  of  Patricia's  independent  look  and  bearing.  And.  Miss 
Fletcher  disliked  tyranny.  That  was  why  she  had  never  liked 
Mrs.  Hamley.  Much  older  than  herself,  she  had  always  re- 
membered her  as  a  tyrant ;  and  she  knew  that  age  and  pros- 
perity had  not  widened  her  borders. 

"  I  hope  she  will  let  you  go  with  me,"  she  said. 

"  I  hope  so  too,"  Patricia  answered  gravely.  "  I  should  like 
to  go  with  you." 

"  We  will  manage  it  then ;  don't  be  afraid,"  said  Mias 
Fletcher. 

And  Patricia  found  trust  in  this  pleasant-visaged,  soft- voiced 
woman  come  marvellously  easy.  She  felt  as  if  she  had  known 
her  a  long  time  ago,  and  was  only  taking  up  an  old  love  not 
beginning  a  new  one.  She  kept  wondering  to  herself  "of 
whom  she  reminded  her;"  but  she  could  give  no  answer,  sim- 
ply because  she  reminded  her  of  no  one,  she  only  wakened  up 
again  a  former  cherished  feeling. 

"  You  are  very  kind  Catherine,  I  am  sure,"  said  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley  stiffly,  when  Miss  Fletcher  proffered  her  request  to  take  the 
two  girls  back  to  the  Hollies,  "  I  am  afraid  I  must  say  no ; 
thank  you.  Miss  Drummond  is  not  well  enough  to  leave  the 
house — Dora  my  dear,  had  you  not  better  move  over  here  to 
the  other  side  of  the  fireplace  ] — you  are  just  in  a  line  with  the 
door  where  you  are.  There  is  nothing  so  bad  as  a  draught." 

And  Dora,  who  was  already  stifling  under  the  shawls  and 
flannels  in  which  Mrs.  Hamley  had  wrapped  her,  and  who  had 
only  the  most  insignificant  little  head  cold  imaginable,  pulled 
her.  Shetland  shav^l  daintily-over  her  chest,  and  carried  herself 
and  her  workbox  into  the  draughtless  corner ;  making  herself 
supremely  uncomfortable  with  the  gentle  grace  and  submissive 
tact  that  characterised  her. 

"  I  am  very  sorry  for  poor  Dora,  but  your  niece  1  she  has  no 
cold,  cannot  she  come  1"  said  Miss  Fletcher. 

Mrs.  Hamley  turned  to  Patricia.  Luckily  for  herself  she 
was  looking  down.  Had  she  raised  her  eyes  and  appealed  with 
them,  as  she  might  easily  have  done,  her  aunt  would  naturally, 
not  with  intentional  ill-nature,  but  by  the  mere  cross-cornered . 
law  of  her  being,  have  found  some  good  reason  why  not ;  but 


DEMETER.  161 

as  she  kept  her  tell-tale  looks  to  herself,  partly  for  the  relief  of 
getting  rid  of  her,  and  partly  because  she  thought  she  ought  to 
find  pleasure  in  the  society  of  two  elderly  people  of  grave  pur- 
suits, albeit  tainted  with  strange  heresies — though  probably 
she  would  be  bored  to  death,  when  she  would  appreciate  home 
the  more — Mrs.  Hamley  said  yes  ;  and  Patricia's  sudden  flush 
was  so  vivid  that  it  set  Miss  Fletcher  wondering  why. 

She  was  either  very  dull  at  Abbey  Holme  as  she  had  imagined, 
and  so  hailed  any  diversion  with  exaggerated  pleasure,  or  sadly 
too  excitable,  she  thought.  In  either  case  Catherine  Fletcher 
was  glad  she  had  asked  her — if  the  former  to  make  her  happy 
for  an  hour  or  two,  if  the  latter  to  give  her  counsel.  For  being 
both  maternal  and  direct,  she  had  more  love  than  respect  for 
young  people,  and  treated  them  all  with  a  certain  aftectionate 
familiarity  with  which  they  were  seldom  offended,  even  when 
it  included  unwelcome  counsel  and  may  be  rebuke. 

"  Shall  you  pass  Martin's  ?"  asked  Dora,  with  her  lisp  rather 
strongly  marked.  Martin  was  the  draper  whom  all  right- 
minded  MilltoAvnians  patronized. 

"  Certainly  if  we  can  do  anything  for  you.  It  will  not  take 
us  five  minutes  out  of  our  way,"  Miss  Fletcher  answered. 

"  I  am  so  much  obliged  to  you.  I  do  want  some  ribbon  very 
much  !"  said  Dora.  "  I  will  not  trouble  you,  dear  Miss  Fletcher ; 
Patricia  will  do  it  for  me  ;  won't  you,  dear  ?" 

"  Of  course,  with  real  pleasure ;  if  I  can  serve  you,  anything, 
darling ! "  was  Patricia's  hearty  answer,  all  the  louder  and 
heartier  because  she  was  glad  to  go  with  the  Fletchers. 

"  What  a  dreadful  fuss  she  makes  about  everything ;  and 
how  she  emphasizes  the  most  trifling  action!"  thought  Mrs. 
Ham  ley ..  "As  if  there  was  any  necessity  for  making  a  profes- 
sion of  faith  about  a  yard  of  ribbon — answering  Dora  as  if  she 
was  her  lover  !  " 

'.'  Will  you  come  up-stairs  with  me,  and  I  will  give  you  the 
pattern !  "  asked  Dora. 

"  My  dear,  throw  the  shawl  over  your  head,  and  cover  your 
mouth.  I  don't  like  y»ur  running  about  the  passages,"  said 
Mrs.  Hamley.  And  Dora,  with  a  shy  glance  of  gratitude, 
smiled  as  she  said,  "  The  house  is  very  warm,  dear/'  and 
obeyed. 

The  girls  left  the  room ;  and  when  they  were  well  out  of 
E 


1(52  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?" 

hearing  Dora,  flinging  the  shawl  off  her  h«ad,  said  with  a  quick 
little  sob — 

"  How  absurd  it  is  of  them  to  keep  me  mewed  up  in  the 
house  like  this  !  There  is  nothing  the  matter  Avith  me  ;  and  I 
wish  I  was  going  with  you  !  I  am  sick  to  death  of  this  dull  draw- 
ing-room, and  that  detestable  lace-work  and  eternal  b6zique  ! " 

To  Mr.  and  Mrs.  -Hamley  themselves  she  said  that  evening 
when  they  were  playing — he  scoring  a  sequence,  Mrs.  Hamley 
holding  double  bezique,  and  she  herself  left  to  the  excitement 
of  three  queens  she  could  neither  marry  nor  join  to  a  fourth — 
"How  much  I  enjoy  our  dear  little  evening*, !  They  are  so 
quiet  and  pleasant ;  and  I  am  so  fond  of  bezique  ! " 

Then  said  Patricia,  "  Why  don't  you  say  you  are  not  ill, 
Dora,  if  you  are  not  ?  I  would  not  be  kept  in  the  house  like 
this  if  I  were  you.  Youliave  only  got  to  tell  the  truth,  and  say 
you  are  all  right." 

"You  know  nothing  about  it,  Patricia,"  Dora  answered  irri- 
tably. "  When  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hamley  say  you  are  ill,  you  are 
ill;  and  nothing  but  a  doctor  from  London  would  convince  them 
that  you  are  well.  And  perhaps  he  would  not.  As  if  I  did 
not  know  them  !" 

"  Then  Dora  if  you  choose  to  give  way  to  them  like  this,  you 
should  not  complain.  There  is  no  good  in  rowing  one  way  and 
looking  another,"  said  Patricia  gravely. 

"Don't  talk  nonsense !"  returned  Dora  crossly.  I  know  how 
I  ought  to  act,  and  I  don't  want  your  advice." 

"I  did  not  mean  to  vex  you,  dear,"  said  Patricia  lovingly.  I 
only  do  not  like  to  see  you  annoyed ;  and  oh,  Dora  !  I  cannot 
bear  to  see  you  so  dreadfully  afraid  of  Aunt  and  Mr.  Hamley !" 

'•'  Better  be  afraid  than  bullied,"  said  Dora,  a  little  sulkily. 
"  One  must  be  one  or  the  other  here.  I  take  the  former,  arid 
you  prefer  the  latter ;  and  I  don't  envy  you  any  more  than  you 
envy  me.  So  we  need  not  talk  any  more  about  it." 

After  Dora  had  found  a  bit  of  ribbon  for  which  she  desired 
a  match — and,  considering  that  she  wanted  it  so  much,  it  was 
odd  what  a  long  time  it  took  to  turn  up — she  put  her  hand 
into  her  pocket,  and,  looking  at  herself  in  the  glass  to  see  if  the 
powder  showed  too  much  about  her  eyebrows,  said  quite  care- 
lessly ;  "  Martin's  is  close  to  the  post-office ;  will  you  post  this 
letter  for  me,  dear  ? " 


DEMETER.  163 

"  Has  the  post-bag  gone?  asked  Patricia  suspecting  nothing, 
but  astonished  ;  for  the  bag  never  went  till  six  o'clock  and  it 
was  only  three  now. 

"  I  suppose  not ;  but  I  don't  wish  it  to  go  in  the  bag,"  Dora 
answered,  still  brushing  off  the  superfluous  powder. 

"No  ?  Why  not?"  was  her  quick  word;  and  then  she 
stopped  and  looked  at  Dora  distressed. 

"Because  I  do  not  want  any  one  to  see  it,"  Dora  answered. 
"Now  Patricia,"  turning  round  from  the  glass,  "do  not  ask 
questions.  You  are  my  friend,  and  I  trust  you.  Put  that  let- 
ter in  the  post  for  me.  Do  not  look  at  the  envelope,  and  do 
not  let  any  one  see  it.  See  how  I  rely  on  you  !  "  she  added 
with  a  good  imitation  of  pathos,  as  she  held  the  girl's  hand, 
into  which  she  had  slipped  the  letter,  and  looked  up  with  her 
pretty  blue  eyes,  tenderly,  beseechingly. 

".I  would  do  anything  in  the  world  for  you,  Dora — you 
know  I  would,"  said  poor  Patricia  with  the  old  conflict  in  her 
heart.  "  But  oh,  my  dear,  my  dear,  how  I  hate  all  this  ma- 
noeuvring and  secrecy  !  Oh,  Dora,  how  I  wish  you  had  not  a 
secret  in  the  world  !" 

"  Some  day  I  will  tell  you  what  I  have,  and  then  you  will 
pity  me,"  sai<l  Dora  plaintively.  "  Now  I  cannot ;  yet  you  must 
help  m^ — blindly." 

"Jt  breaks  rny  heart,"  began  Patricia. 

"It  need  not  do  that,"  interrupted  Dora  with  the  faintest 
little  sarcasm  in  her  voice ;  "  that  would  be  a  pity  ;  for  the 
posting  of  a  letter  for  a  friend  without  telling  any  one  about  it 
is  scarcely  worth  the  fracture  of  such  a  heart  as  yours.  Now 
don't  be  a  goose,  darling,"  she  said,  changing  her  manner  to  a 
caressing  banter  that  was  infinitely  becoming,  and  which  was 
one  of  her  weapons  of  conquest  over  Patricia.  "  There  is  noth- 
ing so  dreadful  in  posting  a  letter,  and  it  is  only  the  tremend- 
ous " — she  was  going  to  say  tyranny,  but,  having  recovered  from 
her  momentary  attack  of  discontented  candour,  she  stopped 
herself  and  substituted  "  care — which  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hamley, 
dear  people,  think  it  right  to  take  of  me  that  obliges  me  to  do 
things  secretly." 

"But  I  would  not  be  obliged,  Dora,"  sa»id  indicia  return- 
ing to  her  old  charge.  "  I  would  either  obty  iiem  loyally  or 
defy  them  openly.  I  would  riot  condescend,  if  1  were  you,  to 


164 


WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


all  this  underhand  work.  I  would  have  more  courage,  more 
self-respect ! " 

"  All  very  well,  Miss  Patricia,  but  we  shall  see  you  with  your 
little  plots  and  plans  before  we  have  done  with  you." 

"  Never,  Dora !    never  while  I  live  ! " 

Dora  smiled.    "  And  your  letter  from  Miss  Biggs  1 " 

"  Ah !  that  is  cruel,  Dora ! "  She  turned  away. 

"  Well,  it  does  sound  ungrateful,  does  it  not  ?  But  all  I  meant 
to  show,  dear,  was  that  if  I  had  secrets  for  one  reason  you  could 
be  brought  to  have  them  for  another.  Say  that  it  was  to  please 
me  and  not  to  get  any  good  for  yourself,  still  it  was  a  secret  all 
the  same  ;  was  it  not  1" 

"  Yes  ;  and  I  must  have  no  more,"  said  Patricia. 

"  Oh !  that  is  not  at  all  the  right  view  to  take,"  laughed 
Dora.  "  You  have  to  put  this  letter  in  the  post  for  me." 

No,  Dora."  She  laid  it  on  the  table  with  the  directed  side 
underneath. 

"Yes,  Patricia,  if  I  ask  you,"  said  Dora  in  the  most  caressing, 
the  most  enchanting  way. 

She  shook  her  head. 

"Now  look  here,  Patricia,"  said  Dora,  speaking  in  a  quiet 
argumentative  way,  not  usual  to  her.  "  I  just  want  to  show 
you  a  little  of  yourself  to  yourself.  When.1  first  asked  you  to  do 
this  for  me,  you  hesitated  ;  when  I  pressed  you,  you  consented ; 
when  I  hurt  your  pride,  you  refused.  I  like  consistency,  I  must 
say!" 

"  It  was  not  because  you  hurt  my  pride,  Dora." 

Dora  shrugged  her  shoulders.    "  Prove  it  then !" 

"  No ;  it  is  because  I  hate  having  to  do  with  secrets.  They 
degrade  one's  very  soul.  " 

"  Yes,  that  is  just  what  I  say;  your  own  soul,  always  your  own 
miserable  little  soul,  and  youj  poor  friend's  soul  and  body  both 
may  go  to  destruction  for  what  you  care !  You  say  you  love 
me,  and  I  have  tried  my  very  best  to  make  your  life  here  happy, 
and  to  stand  between  you  and  Mrs.  Haraley;  and  yet  you  are 
not  brave  or  unselfish  enough  to  do  such  a  little  thing  for  me  as 
post  a  letter  without  proclaiming  it  on  the  housetop  I"  She 
turned  away  petulantly  and  began  to  cry. 

The  strong  heart  went  do  .'ii- before  her  tears. 

"Don't  cry,  Dora,"  said  Patricia  taking  her  in  her  arms. 


DEMETBR.  165 

"Don't  cry,  darling,  I  will  do  what  you  asked  me — I  will  do 
anything  you  ask  me  ! " 

"  Post  that  letter  for  me  ? "  sobbed  Dora  with  her  back 
turned. 

"  Yes  dear  ;  post  that  letter  for  you." 

"  And  not  let  the  Fletchers  see  it  ? " 

"  No ;  I  will  put  it  in  myself." 

"  You  are  a  darling,"  said  Dora,  drying  her  eyes  with  des- 
patch. "  I  thought  you  could  not  be  such  a  cruel,  cold-hearted 
thing  as  to  make  me  so  unhappy." 

"  I  cannot  make  you  unhappy,  Dora,"  said  Patricia  fervently  j 
"  I  love  you  too  much." 

Dora  stood  up  on  tiptoe  and  kissed  her ;  but  the  kiss  did  not 
altogether  sooth  the  poor  girl.  The  glory  seemed  to  have  gone 
out  of  her  day  somehow,  and  the  cold  grey,  characteristic  of 
Abbey  Holme,  to  have  come  back  again.  Had  she  been  asked 
she  would  have  rather  given  up  the  Fletchers  altogether  than 
have  undertaken  this  surreptitious  posting  ;  which  after  all  was 
only  a  symbol.  But  things  had  to  go  on  now  as  they  had  begun, 
and  she  must  carry  her  sorrowful  heart  and  changed  grace  to  as 
good  a  conclusion  as  might  be.  So  the  girls  went  back  into  the 
drawing-room,  and  Mrs.  Hamley  scolded  them  for  the  long  time 
they  had  been  up-stairs. 

When  the  trio  prepared  to  set  out,  the  lady  of  Abbey  Holme 
wished  them  all  a  stiff  farewell,  arranging  to  send  for  Patricia 
at  half-past  nine  precisely  ;  and  Mrs.  Hamley's  fractions 
meant  fixed  quantities,  not  floating  margins  of  elastic  dimen- 
sions. 

"  I  shall  expect  you  home  at  a  quarter  to  ten,"  she  said  with 
a  severe  glance  at  the  clock,  as  if  administering  the  oath  of 
witness.  "  You  must  be  ready  when  the  carriage  calls  for  you, 
Patricia,  and  do  not  keep  the  horses  waiting  this  cold  weather. 
It  is  quite  cruel  to  take  them  out  in  sueh  nights  ! "  as  if  per- 
sonally injured. 

"Shall  I  walk  home,  Aunt?"  suggested  Patricia,  ever  ready 
with  her  remedy. 

"  Don't  be  silly,"  was  the  rejoinder. 

"  And  do  not  forget  my  commission,  please,"  said  Dora  with 
her  coaxing  smile. 

"  No  dear,"  said  Patricia  with  embarrassment 


166  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

And  Miss  Fletcher,  who  had  the  faculty  of  observation,  caught 
the  difference  in  her  tone  as  well  as  in  her  face,  and  remem- 
bered it. 

When  they  got  to  the  town,  Patricia  first  matched  Dora's 
ribbon  with  a  maddening  exactness  as  to  width  and  shade — 
though  the  little  lady  wanted  no  ribbon  at  all,  save  as  an  excuse 
— and  then  saying,  "I  must  go  to  the  post-office,  please,"  put 
her  hand  into  her  pocket  and  looked  disturbed, 

"  Have  you  a  letter  to  post  ?  Give  it  to  Henry  ;  he  will  do 
it  for  you,"  said  Miss  Fletcher. 

"Yes,  give  it  to  me,"  said  Dr.  Fletcher. 

"  Thank  you.  I  must  post  it  myself,"  answered  Patricia,  her 
disturbance  deepening. 

"  I  am  safe,  I  assure  you.  I  will  not  drop  it,"  he  laughed 
holding  out  his  hand. 

"  Thank  you  very  much,  but  I  promised  to  do  it  myself,"  she 
answered  eagerly  ;  and  then  she  crimsoned  with  the  sudden 
consciousness  that  in  her  very  honesty  she  had  committed  an 
indiscretion,  and  for  the  sake  of  more  effectual  hiding  had  be- 
trayed more  than  she  ought. 

All  of  which  Miss  Fletcher  noted  with  those  quiet  brown 
eyes  of  hers  which  had  the  trick  of  seeing  everything  without 
seeming  to  notice  anything ;  casting  up-  one  of  those  sums  in 
moral  arithmetic  by  which  she  deduced  meanings  from  actions 
— the  product  generally  coming  right.  She  drew  the  conclu- 
sion now  that  Patricia  was  being  used  somehow  by  Dora  ;  and 
in  the  course  of  the  walk  she  spoke  with  earnestness  of  the 
moral  deterioration  sure  to  result  from  manoeuvring  and  secrecy, 
and  the  obligation  laid  on  us  not  to  mix  ourselves  up  in  matters 
where  we  can  do  no  good  and  might  get  harm. 

"  But  if  we  can  do  good  ?  "  asked  Patricia  earnestly. 

"  Then  the  question  would  resolve  itself  into  one  of  '  compa- 
rative values,'  "  said  Miss  Fletcher.  "  But  it  would  be  only 
some  most  important  good  for  others  that  could  reconcile  me 
to  any  line  of  action  which  was  not  essentially  candid  and 
straightforward." 

^Patricia  sighed.  Then  she  looked  into  her  new  friend's  face, 
her  own  kindling  : 

"  It  does  me  good  to  hear  you  speak,"  she  said,  sliding  her 
hand  under  her  arm.  "  It  is  like  dear  uncle  speaking  through 


DEMETER.  167 

your  voice.  May  I  come  to  you  when  I  am  in  doubt  what  is 
the  right  thing  to  do  ? " 

"  Surely,  dear  child  !  *  said  Catherine  warmly.  "  I  can  un- 
derstand that,  with  all  sincerity  of  liking  and  respect  for  your 
aunt,  you  do  not  find  it  possible  always  to  ask  her  advice  on  all 
subjects." 

"  No,  I  do  not,"  she  answered.  "  She  is  so  different  from 
dearest  uncle,  and  I  feel  so  out  of  place  somehow  among  them. 
I  cannot  tell  at  times  what  I  ought  to  do,  and  I  have  no  one  to 
advise  me." 

"  Make  me  your  mother  confessor,  and  perhaps  I  can  help 
you,"  said  Catherine,  pressing  her  hand  kindly  against  her  warm, 
comfortable  side ,  and  Patricia  thought  to  herself,  "  If  I  had 
known  my  own  mother  I  should  have  felt  for  her  as  I  feel  for 
Miss  Fletcher." 

"  I  want  you  to  look  on  this  as  a  kind  of  outside  home,  and 
on  us  as  your  unregistered  relations,"  said  Catherine.  "  We 
have  known  your  family  so  long  that  you  do  not  come  to  us  as 
a  stranger,  and  both  Henry  and  myself  are  prepared  to  take 
you  to  our  hearts.  Do  you  hear  1  You  are  to  come  to  us  in 
your  troubles,  and  give  us  your  confidence  and  love.  We  will 
help  you  with  our  advice,  child ;  and  love  always  does  good — 
both  to  those  who  give  and  those  who  receive." 

She  said  this  just  as  they  reached  the  Hollies'  gate.  It  was 
a  good  omen  for  the  disturbed  young  soul  needing  enlighten- 
ment and  the  living  warmth  of  friendly  direction  as  it  did. 

I 


1  G8  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOYE  ?  " 


CHAPTER  XVL 

BY    PRINCIPLE. 

tHE  Fletchers  were  people  with  principles  and  ideas  of 
which  they  did  not  enly  talk,  but  by  which  they  lived. 
It  was  not  enough  for  them  to  eat,  drink,  and  be  deco- 
rously merry  ;  to  pay  their  tithes  and  taxes  as  gentlefolks 
should  ;  to  keep  to  the  broad  way  of  elemental  morality ;  to  do 
little  acts  of  charity  out  of  their  accumulated  balance,  by  which 
they  sacrificed  nothing  they  desired  to  possess,  but,  under  the 
idea  that  they  had,  counting  off  all  their  possible  purchases  as 
so  many  offerings  cast  into  the  treasury  of  the  Lord  ;  but  they 
were  people  who  have  taken  to  themselves  the  great  law  of 
duty,  and  who  had  set  out  to  live  up  to  their  ideal. 

They  went  to  first  principles  and  did  not  give  much  weight 
to  expediency.  They  did  not  believe  that  because  things  are 
they  must  therefore  be  upheld,  and  they  were  not  afraid  of  the 
right  even  if  iconoclastic  and  subversive.  To  be  sure  they  knew 
that  it  is  always  troublesome,  and  at  times  personally  damaging, 
to  maintain  the  right  of  God  in  the  face  of  the  wrong  of  society ; 
but  they  thought  life  meant  ever  trouble  in  some  shape  or  other, 
esapcially  in  the  difficulties  which  beset  endeavour,  and  they 
deferred  their  lotus-eating  to  another  sphere. 

The  great  facts  cherished  by  them  were,  the  honour  due  to 
humanity  irrespective  ef  social  condition,  and  the  duty  of  the 
strong  to  help  the  weak.  Hence  their  own  lives  were  organised 
on  a  plan  of  almost  patriarchal  simplicity  of  manners  and  habits, 
and  they  dedicated  more  than  the  prescribed  tenth  to  their 
poorer  brethren.  They  were  laughed  at  of  course,  and  some- 
times more  than  laughed  at ;  Milltown  was  not  the  kind  of 
place  where  they  were  likely  to  find  sympathisers  ;  but  they 
took  their  own  way  as  tranquilly  and  steadfastly  as  if  society 
had  ciovvned  them  with  roses  not  thorns,  and  right  for  right's 
sake  was  a  law  good  enough  for  them  by  which  to  live. 

Yet  they  were  very  different  each  from  the  other,  for  all 


BY   PRINCIPLE.  169 

their  sympathy  and  harmony  of  views  and  circumstance. 
Woman-like,  she  had  the  more  arbitrary  singlenegs  of  logic  in 
her  feelings,  and  carried  out  her  views  to  the  ultimate  where 
he  discerned  an  opposing  law.  She  had  move  passion  in  her 
love  for  those  she  admired ;  but  then  she  brought  the  same 
warmth  of  nature  into  her  dislikes.  He,  a  man  without 
much  weakness  of  soul  or  flesh,  was  therefore  possessed  of  a 
certain  philosophical  pity  for  frailty  of  all  kinds  which  never 
grew  to  anger  save  when  the  question  of  wrong-doing  was  one 
of  oppression ;  and  then  he  was  implacable.  But  as  a  rule  he 
took  things  more  quietly  than  she  did  ;  striving  to  get  to  the 
roots  of  a  man's  action,  searching  lor  the  physiological  causes, 
the  influencing  circumstances,  where  others,  and  she  too  at 
times,  condemned  only  tlje  fact.  This  made  him -eminently 
just.  Not  the  justice  which  means  legality,  retributive  punish- 
ment, and  the  like  ;  but  the  ability  to  see  all  round  a  question, 
and  to  decide  on  it  according  to  its  root-work  arid  surroundings. 
Thus  no  one  could  count  on  him  as  a  partisan  irrespective  of 
justice  ;  by  which  it  came  about  that  he  had  the  knack  of  offend- 
ing all  sides  in  turn  because  he  would  not  be  unfair  to  any. 
The  popular  verdict  on  this  brother  .and  sister  was,  that  he 
was  the  more  mischievous  of  the  two,  and  she  the  more 
foolish. 

They  were  both  hard  students  and  knew  many  things  out- 
side the  ordinary  grooves  of  education.  The  one  luxury  they 
allowed  themselves  in  their  simply-appointed  home  was  the 
luxury  of  bo»ks  and  scientific  appliances.  They  had  a  first- 
class  microscope  and  a  first-class  telescope,  which  last  they  had 
fitted  up  in  a  rude  but  efficient  observatory  that  excited  more 
ridicule  than  admiration  by  its  cunning  contrivances  of  little 
cost.  The  subject  too,  met  with  as  little  sympathy  as  the 
method  by  which  it  was  followed.  People  said  with  a  sneer 
they  supposed  the  learned  doctor  was  devising  a  new  system  of 
astronomy  which  was  to  upset  the  Newtonian  ;  and  because  he 
busied  himself  with  certain  biological  experiments,  which  in- 
cluded boiled  flasks,  infused  hay,  and  a  cloud  of  moving  crea- 
tures as  the  result,  they  asked  him  if  the  old  axiom  ex  nihilo 
nihil  fit  was  all  a  mistake,  and  was  dead  matter  God  ? 

All  these  studies  were  taken  to  be  a  kind  of  flying  in  the  face 
of  Providence  ;  and  when,  tempted  by  the  desire  to  let  a  little 


1 70  "  WHAT  WOULD  TOT?  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

light  in  upon  those  Brains  which  seemed  to  him  to  cherish 
their  darkness  too  fondly,  he  suffered  himself  to  mention  any 
facts  bearing  on  the  great  scientific  questions  of  the  day,  the 
after-summary  was  invariably  set  in  the  one  unchanging  key — 
the  doctor  was  an  infidel,  and  his  conversation  was  absolutely 
impious.  Add  to  this,  essentially  "  radical  "  political  doctrines, 
of  which  the  Milltown  translation  was  that  he  and  his  sister 
were  "  known  to  be  socialists,  red  republicans  of  the  deepest 
dye,  wanting  an  equal  division  of  property,  and  desirous  of 
pulling  down  king,  lords,  and  commons  to  the  one  muddy 
level  of  unwashed  ruffianism,"  and  it  may  be  imagined  that  for 
people  who  valued  truth  they  had  sometimes  rather  a  hard 
time  of  it. 

Strange  to  say,  with  all  this  they  were  not  entirely  approved 
of  by  the  class  they  upheld,  and  not'personally  unpopular  with 
the  class  they  offended.  The  peasantry  and  little  people  in 
country  places  like  to  feel  the  gentry  far  above  them.  They 
do  not  care  to  be  caught  up  into  the  empyrean  of  an  equal 
humanity,  but  enjoy,  the  poetry  of  their  self-abasement  in  the 
belief  that  their  superiors  are  indeed  their  betters.  They 
think  that  those  who  treat  them  with  respect  lower  themselves 
to  their  own  level,  and  would  rather  their  gods  came  about  them, 
awful  and  effulgent,  earning  their  lightning  in  their  hands 
and  their  crowns  above  their  brows,  than  as  simple  men  and 
women  benign  and  unarmed.  They  liked  the  good  things 
which  came  to  them  from  the  Demeter  of  the  Hollies ;  and  the 
women;  wnen  in  personal  trouble  of  sickness,  sorrow  or  dire 
necessity,  turned  instinctivly  to  her  as  possessed  of  all  know- 
ledge and  all  healing  power ;  but  in  daily  matters  they  would 
rather  not  have  been  made  to  sit  in  her  presence  ;  they  were 
bothered  by  her  advice  as  to  the  management  of  their  children ; 
her  recipes  for  cooking  puzzled  them ;  and  the  way  in  which 
she  opened  ^indows  and  doors  in  cases  of  fever  and  the  like 
seemod  to  them  barbarous  and  downright  heathenish,  as  well 
as  murderous. 

So  too,  her  insisting  on  cleanliness  and  fresh  air  in  her 
tenants  more  than  compensated  for  the  low  rent  at  which  Miss 
Fletcher's  cottages  were  let ;  and  their  undeniable  superiority 
in  wholesomeness  was  paid  for,  they  thought,  by  the  greater  ex- 
teot  of  surface  there  was  to  keep  clean,  and  the  fidfads,  called 


BY   PRINCIPLE.  171 

improvements,,  which  were  not  wanted  and  seldom  properly 
managed. 

All  of  which  she  and  her  brother  knew  well  enough.  But 
when  twitted  with  the  old  simile  of  the  pearls  and  the  swine 
by  those  who  held  to  class  degradation  as  the  righteous  ordering 
of  society,  and  who  thought  that  class  ignorance  is  and  should  be 
irremovable  in  the  lower  forthegreaterconvenienceof  thehigher, 
they  used  to  answer  quietly  :  "  The  less  such  things  as  we 
have  giown  to  consider  the  first  necessities  of  decent  living  are 
appreciated  by  our  poorer  brothers,  the  more  pressing  our  duty 
of  educating  them  up  to  that  point  of  appreciation." 

But  the  doctrine  did  not  take. 

The  Fletchers  got  the  lash  on  all  sides.  If  a  man  was  too 
poor  to  send  his  children  to  school  and  they  paid  for  him,  as 
they  were  sure  to  do,  his  neighbours,  just  able  with  hard  pinch- 
ing to  pay  for  theirs,  railed  at  the  cunning  which  knew  how  to 
get  the  length  of  grand  folks'  feet  for  the  one  part,  and  at  the 
simpleness  which  let  that  length  be  got  at  for  the  other  ;  while 
the  Milltown  gentry,  who  to  a  man  disliked  the  scheme  of 
educating  the  poor,  denounced  "  those  Fletcher  fools  "  as  play- 
ing the  very  mischief  with  class  usefulness  and  parental  respon- 
sibility. If,  they  said,  a  man  brings  children  into  the  world 
for  whom  he  cannot  provide,  he  must  suffer  for  it  through  them  ; 
and  to  assist  him  by  assisting  his  little  ones  was  to  go  against 
the  laws  of  God  himself. 

When  winter  came,  and  with  it  supplies  of  food  and  clothes 
and  firing  from  the  Hollies  as  surely  as  the  frost  and  snow, 
those  whose  alpha  of  political  economy  was  that  the  weaker 
must  go  to  the  wall  in  the  press,  and  suffer  that  the  strong  may 
be  made  glad,  and  whose  omega  was  the  sin  of  charity,  de- 
clared that  the  place  was  becoming  revolutionary  by  his  wicked- 
ness and  pauperized  by  her  folly,  and  that  soon  every  gentle- 
man would  have  to  make  himself  a  beggar  that  the  beggars 
might  be  gentlemen.  When  they  bought  up  small  tenements 
and  lowered  the  rents,  such  men  as  Colonel  Lowe,  whose 
tumble-down  hovels  stood  at  a  rack-rent,  said  they  ought  to  be 
prosecuted  for  interfering  with  market  values  ;  and  when  they 
lent  money  to  small  landowners,  to  prevent  the  necessity  of 
selling  their  little  farms  and  fields,  Mr.  Hamley,  who  had  the 
land-hunger  on  him,  had  been  heard  to  say  with  an  oath  that 


172  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

this  tampering  with  the  natural  flow  of  capital  and  land  ought 
to  be  made  as  actionable  as  the  lowered  rents,  and  that  some 
day  "  Yon  hound  Fletcher  would  find  himself  in  the  wrong 
box,  and  the  Lord  make  it  hot  for  him  ! " 

No  Milltown  lady  would  take  a  servant  from  the  Hollies. 
To  be  sure  there  were  not  many  opportunities,  for  the  place 
was  good  and  sometimes  the  maids  were  wise.  But  sometimes 
they  were  not,  and  preferred  change  for  the  sake  of  change  to 
the  loving  home  they  had  found  under  Miss  Fletcher.  And 
then  their  chances  in  Milltown  were  but  slender.  The  ladies 
said  they  were  spoilt  by  ever-indulgence,  and  were'  good  for 
nothing  after  they  had  passed  through  Miss  Fletcher's  hands. 
Even  the  labourers  who  worked  for  them  at  odd  times  had  dif- 
ficulty in  finding  jobs  on  the  off-days  ;  employers  disliking  the 
contrast  between  the  wages  given  at  the  Hollies  and  those  pre- 
cribefl  by  the  labour-market,  and  resenting  the  surplusage  -as  a 
wrong  done  to  themselves  who  did  not  choose  to  give  so  much. 
This  too  was  counted  to  the  Fletchers  for  unrighteousness ;  and 
because  they  were  the  friends  of  the  poor  they  were  held  to  be 
the  enemies  of  the  rich,  and  condemned  as  undermining  the 
rights  of  capital  in  proportion  as  they  recognised  the  rights  of 
labour.  ' 

But  haunted  by  that  odd  resolve  of  theirs  to  do  the  absolute 
right  as  between  man  and  man,  seeing  everywhere  Humanity 
and  nowhere  social  arrangements,  they  cared  for  none  of  the 
hard  names  wherewith  they  were  assailed.  When  society  was 
unjust,  they  stepped  in  with  their  reconciling  measures,  and 
they  found  their  reward  in  the  worth  of  the  things  they  did, 
not  in  the  euphony  of  the  verdict  with  which  the  world  re- 
ceived them.  They  lived  neither  for  praise  nor  for  thanks,  but 
for  humanity  and  the  right ;  but  they  had  to  bear  their  cross 
in  return,  this  being  just  the  line  to  which  society  is  ever  most 
fiercely  inimical. 

These  then,  were  Patricia  Kemball's  new  friends,  and  the  as 
yet  unknown  sphere  of  thought  and  feeling  into  which  she  was 
to  be  introduced. 

When  the  door  Avas  opened  and  they  went  in,  the  girl  was 
struck  by  the  house  as  different  from  anything  she  had  ever 
seen  before.  Her  old  home  at  Barsands  had  been  bare  and 
rugged,  scrupulously  clean,  but  as  plain  as  the  old  Holdfast  it- 


BY  PRINCIPLE  173 

self.  Abbey  Holme  was  rich  with  gold  and  crimson,  elaborate 
ornamentation,  large  tracts  of  mirror,  huge  vases  of  modern 
French  porcelain,  pa'pier-mache  chairs  and  tables,  and  a  great 
deal  of  bright  steel,  cut  glass,  and  showy  pictures.  It  was  filled 
with  size  and  glitter  rather  than  beauty — a  house  of  first-class 
upholstery,  resplendent  in  its  way,  but  that  way  one  wherein 
both  art  and  harmony  were  made  subservient  to  expense  ;  and 
it  was  singularly  unhomelike,  and  though  monotonous  destitute 
of  all  which  gives  the  sensation  of  comfort  or  rest.  The  Hollies 
was  simple,  but  strangely  quaint  and  beautiful;  for  beauty  was 
part  of  the  Fletchers'  religion  of  life  :  only  it  was  beauty  that 
did  not  with  them  necessarily  include  costliness.  The  materials 
were  everywhere  inexpensive,  but  the  colours  were  pure  and 
harmonious.  The  ornaments  were  few  but  of  good  design  and 
workmanship ;  books  made  up  much  of  the  wall  furniture  ;  and 
though  it  was  winter,  flowers  and  growing  plants  were  in  pots 
and  hanging  baskets  about  the  windows.  There  was  evidently 
a  central  idea  in  the  arrangements  of  the  various  rooms  and 
passages.  Incongruous  things  were  not  massed  together  with- 
out regard  to  epoch,  style,  intention,  as  is  the  rule  with  most 
houses ;  but  each  thing  seemed  to  fall  naturally  in  the  place 
where  it  was  put,  and  if  aught  had  been  removed  the  rest  would 
have  been  imperfect.  And  yet,  with  all  this  artistic  exactness 
of  arrangement,  the  house  had  the  free  possibilities  of  home- 
liness and  comfort.  The  tables  were  for  use  not  show ;  and 
with  rooms  not  half  the  size  of  those  at  Abbey  Holme  there 
was  more  than  double  the  space  available. 

The  effect  of  the  whole  was  old-fashioned  and  un-English. 
This  last  was  due  partly  to  the  wooden  structural  chimney- 
pieces,  built  up  with  shelves  and  pigeon-holes  for  bits  of  old 
china,  where  the  looking-glass  belonging  was  set  deep  in  the 
shadow,  lightening  what  else  would  have  been  a  dark  space,  but 
not  obtrusive  as  a  universal  reflector ;  partly  to  the  tiled,  square 
fire-places,  and  the  bold  Italian  dogs ;  to  the  waxed  oaken 
floors,  and  squares  of  carpet  and  loose  rugs  in  place  of  the  con- 
ventional Brussels ;  to  a  large  amount  of  dark  simply-carved 
wood  in  one  room,  and  of  plain  deal,  squared,  and  painted  by 
Miss  Fletcher's  own  hand,  in  another;  to  lines  of  quaint  blue 
pottery  ;  and  a  general  background  of  flat  grey,  variously  tinted 
and  patterned,  against  which  the  bits  of  rich  colour  and  gold 


174  "WHAT  WOTTLT)  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

oame  out  with  gorgeous  yet  subdued  strength.  It  was  a  house 
of  so  much  evident  plan  and  design  that  a  guiding  principle  of 
life  seemed  the  fitting  ethical  outcome. 

The  manners  too,  at  the  Hollies  were  as  different  from  the 
ordinary  manners  of  society  as  all  the  rest.  When  the  maid 
opened  the  door — no  man  was  kept  save  for  the  garden  work 
and  to  do  the  rougher  jobs  of  the  house — Miss  Fletcher  smiled 
to  her  a  friendly  greeting,  and  the  girl  looked  back  one  as 
friendly.  She  was  a  pretty  young  person  and  nicely  dressed, 
without  the  "  flag,"  and  lady-like  because  happy  and  refined  ; 
and  she  gave  the  impression  of  having  supplemented  her  ser- 
vanthood  with  a  fine  kind, of  human  affectionateness,  and  of 
having  added  relf-respect  to  her  code  of  duty.  But  she  was  a 
girl  whom  no  one  in  Milltown  save  Catherine  Fletcher  would 
have  taken  into  service  at  all ;  a  mother  and  no  wife,  and 
drifting  fust  into  ruin  when  the  bountiful  Deineter  caught  her 
up  in  her  strong  hands  and  cherished  her  back  to  happiness 
and  virtue. 

"  My  dear,"  said  Miss  Fletcher  kindly,  "  when  you  lay  tho 
table  will  you  set  a  place  for  Miss  Keraball  ?  " 

The  girl  looked  at  the  young  visitor  pleasantly.  Her  man- 
ner meant  a  welcome. 

"  Yes  ma'am,"  she  said,  and  helped  her  off  with  her  goloshes, 
as  her  daughter  might;  not  servilely,  but  with  friendliness. 

"Thank  you,  my  dear,"  said  Miss  Fletcher;  and  the  girl, 
gathering  up  the  things,  smiled  again  and  said — 

"  I  hope  you  have  taken  no  cold  this  blustering  day.  Shall 
I  bring  you  a  otip  of  tea  ? — and  the  young  lady  ? " 

"  Well,  do  so,  Mary  Anne  ;  it  will  be  refreshing,"  was  the 
answer. 

"  If  you  will  take  your  things  off  now  it  will  be  ready  for 
you  when  you  come  down,"  said  Mary  Anne  ;  "and  there  is  a 
good  fire  for  you  in  the  drawing-room." 

"  Thanks,"  said  Miss  Fletcher,  "  we  will." 

Particia  stared.  In  her  old  life  she  had  been  kind  enough  to 
the  servants  at  the  cottage,  but  she  had  always  been  the  mis- 
tress in  her  own  way.  She  had,  perhaps,  imbibed  a  certain 
sense  of  discipline  from  the  captain,  and  she  had  thought  it  her 
duty  to  keep  them  up  to  the  mark,  and  to  see  that  they  did  not 
waste,  iior  gad  about,  nor  slight  their  work,  nor  fail  iu  daily 


BY  PRINCIPLE.  1?5 

godliness  of  service.  For  even  Patricia  had  her  share,  if  com- 
paratively a  small  one,  of  the  hardness  characteristic  of  virtuous 
youth.  At  Abbey  Holme  the  servants  were  spoken  to  as  if 
they  were  intelligent  dogs  who  could  understand  what  was 
said  to  them,  but  of  whose  sensibilities  or  self-respect  no  one 
need  take  account ;  or,  if  as  men,  then  men  eternally  in  dis- 
grace, with  the  master  and  mistress  resentful  and  displeased. 
Mr.  Hamley's  manners,  always  dictatorial,  were  at  times  bru- 
tal ;  Mrs.  Hamley's  were  glacial,  as  if  she  had  been  quite 
recently  annoyed  ;  and  no  one  asked,  but  all  commanded  ser- 
vice, for  which  they  never  returned  thanks.  But  Catherine 
Fletcher  smiled  at  her  maid  and  spoke  kindly,  and  said  "My 
dear"  as  to  a  young  girl  of  her  own  rank  ;  giving  her  order  in 
the  form  of  a  request ;  seemingly  too  secure  of  her  dignity  to 
be  afraid  of  lowering  it  by  the  practical  confession  of  human 
equality.  She  saw  Patricia's  look  of  astonishment,  and  as  they 
went  into  her  dressing-room,  she  said  laughing,  "  You  were 
surprised  at  my  calling  Mary  Anne,  'my  dear?'" 

"  Yes,"  said  Patricia,  frankly.  "  I  have  never  heard  a  mis- 
tress call  her  servant  '  dear '  before,  and  it  sounded  odd.  But 
I  like  it,"  she  added. 

"  Do  you  ?  It  is  ono  of  my  ways,  as  the  people  here  say;  and 
I  always  see  when  it  startles." 

"  But  do  not  the  servants  take  advantage  of  it,  and  become 
impertinent  ? "  asked  Patricia."  * 

"  Sometimes  ;  not  often.     And  if  they  do,  what  then? " 

Patricia  looked  straight  into  Miss  Fletcher's  face. 

"  You  turn  them  away,  of  course,"  she  said. 

"  No,  I  do  not ;  I  keep  them,  and  try  to  teach  them  better," 
answered  the  lady ;  and  this  time  Patricia  turned  her  eyes  to 
the  fire  and  looked  perplexed.  Keep  a  servant  who  had 
been  impertinent !  It  was  a  strange  doctrine,  and  it  puzzled 
her. 

"  Why  should  I  not  keep  them  and  try  to  teach  them 
better  ?  "  Miss  Fletcher  continued.  "  Think  of  the  difference 
between  us.  I  am  a  middle-aged  woman,  old  enough  to  be 
their  mother,  with  a  better  education  than  they  have  had;  with 
more  experience,  more  thought ;  and  consequently  I  ought  to 
have  more  wisdom  and  self-control,  which  is  part  of  wisdom. 
Do  you  not  think  it  would  be  a  shame  in  me  if  I  had  not 


176  "  WHAT  WOULt)  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

patience  with  these  young  creatures,  so  much  more  ignorant 
and  undisciplined  than  myself  ? " 

"  Yes,  put  that  way,  you  are  right,"  said  Patricia  ;  "  but" 
— — —  she  hesitated. 

"  But,  you  would  say,  they  are  servants  born  to  obey  and 
take  whaC  they  can  get  from  their  superiors ;  and  that  this 
kind  of  personal  consideration  is  against  the  laws  of  society.  I 
grant  it.  But,  on  my  side,  I  say  that  the  way  in  which  mis- 
tresses, good  women  in  their  own  spheres,  allow  themselves  to 
.treat  their  servants  is  one  of  the  authorized  sins  of  society  ;  so 
you  see,  rny  dear,  between  an  authorized  sin  and  my  own  con- 
science I  choose  the  latter.  And  I  think  I  am  right." 

"But  what  should  we  do  if  servants  were  made  equal  to 
ourselves  ? "  said  Patricia ;  "  we  should  have  to  do  our  own 
work." 

"  Which  I  do  not  regard  as  a  terrible  hardship,  were  it  to  be 
even  so,"  exclaimed  Miss  Fletcher ;  "  but  it  would  not  be  as 
you  say.  We  should  always  have  servants,  that  is,  helpers ; 
but  we  should  have  a  higher  class — sisters,  not  slaves ;  equals 
whom  we  should  be  bound  to  treat  with  respect  and  considera- 
tion, and  who  would  do  their  duties  from  a  higher  stand-point 
than  that  which  they  hold  now.  This  habit  of  disrespect  to- 
wards servants,  which  we  allow  ourselves,  does  us  as  much 
harm  as  it  does  them.  The  greatest  curse  of  slavery  lies  with 
the  owners,  not  the  ownedJ' 

"  I  wish  I  was  like  you,    said  Patricia  impulsively. 

"  I  hope  you  will  be  far  better,"  answered  her  new  friend, 
patting  her  shoulder  kindly.  "  But  come  downstairs ;  I  must 
not  make  you  as  sad  a  democrat  as  I  am  myself,"  she  added 
with  a  pleasant  abruptness  ;  "  so  let  us  go  down.  If  we  stay 
much  longer  Mary  Anne's  tea  will  be  cold,  and  she  will  find  that 
she  has  given  her  labour  in  vain ;  always  a  disheartening  thing 
for  a  worker." 

The  conversation  during  the  evening  drifted,  not  without  in- 
tention, on  Patricia's  Hie  at  Abbey  Holme.  As  there  was 
nothing  t'j  be  ashamed  of  in  it  there  was  nothing  to  conceal. 
Not  that  the  girl  entered  into  details.  The  great  sorrow  of  her 
life,  how  to  reconcile  humility  and  truth,  and^that  other  grief, 
how  to  reconcile  love  with  disapprobation,  she  left  unnoted. 
Her  friendship  was  too  new  yet  ibr  full  confidence.  But  the 


BY   PRINCIPLE.  177 

Fletchers  felt  instinctively  how  sad  it  all  was  for  her,  and  how 
difficult  to  remedy.  In  this  house  of  emphatic  rule  and  sup- 
pression here  was  a  young  creature  entirely  without  guidance, 
and  in  all  the  dangers  attendant  on  spiritual  loneliness.  Her 
energies,  cramped  on  the  one  side,  were  wasted  on  the  other  j 
her  thoughts,  becoming  active  and  importunate,  were  without 
a  centre  or  an  object ;  her  self-education  was  necessarily  frag- 
mentary and  incomplete,  and  there  was  no  one  to  help  her 
spiritually,  intellectually,  or  morally.  If  only  they  might  be  of 
use  to  her — this  fme-natured,  noble  girl,  so  lost  and  lonesome 
now  !  Yet  how  could  they  help  her  ?  They  knew  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley's  jealousy  too  well  to  hope  that  she  would  give  Patricia 
into  any  one's  hands ;  while  they,  specially  tainted  in  her 
sight  with  various  moral  heresies,  of  which  that  same  servant- 
question  was  not  the  least,  were  less  likely  to  win  her  than 
any  other. 

Still,  if  they  might  have  her  with  them  often,  they  knew 
they  could  do  much  for  her.  They  could  teach  her  how  to 
think  as  well  as  what  to  learn ;  they  couLl  open  to  her  the 
marvels  of  science  and  the  treasures  of  literature  ;  they  could 
take  her  to  nature  for  her  joy  and  to  humanity  for  her  duties. 
Knowledge  and  love,  knowledge  and  good  work,  knowledge 
and  hving  out  of  herself  for  the  benefit  of  others  ;  yes,  the  Flet- 
chers knew  clearly  enough  that  they  could  help  Reginald  Kern- 
ball's  daughter,  and  place  her  in  the  light  if  they  were  allowed. 
And  it  pained  them  both  to  feel  that  perhaps  this  bright,  young, 
ardent  soul  would  be  atrophied  in  the  sandy  desert  of  conven- 
tional inaction,  or  stifled  in  the  vapour-bath  of  luxury  and  the 
world,  while  they  who  might  have  led  it  up  to  greatness  and 
delight  were  forbidden. 

However,  they  made  the  effort.  In  a  few  days  after  this 
Miss  Fletcher  wrote  up  to  Mrs.  Hamley  asking  her  permission 
to  read  German  with  Patricia.  It  would  be  a  pleasure  to  her, 
and  would  he4p  the  girl  who  was  anxious  to  learn  the  language  ; 
with  pleasant  little  personal  words  that  were  not  without  their 
due  value.  And  Mrs.  Hamley,  because  she  was  angry  and  dis- 
contented with  her  niece,  consented  ;  with  the  feeling  of  aban- 
doning Patricia  to  her  own  devices,  casting  her  off  and  cutting 
her  out  of  the  inheritance  of  love.  So  Patricia  began  to  read 
German  with  Catherine  Fletcher,  and  to  have  "  half-hours  with 
L 


178  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

the  microscope  "  with  the  doctor.  And  when  the  lessons  were 
done  she  went  with  her  new  friend  into  the  cottages  of  the 
poor,  where  she  saw  life  as.it  is  without  gloss  or  varaish,  and  as 
she  had  seen  it  at  Barsands. 

This  bold  strong  contact  with  reality  did  her  good.  It 
strengthened  her  for  the  better  carrying  of  her  own  cross  to  see 
the  pathetic  patience  with  which  the  poor  hear  theirs  ;  and  in 
thinking  much  of  them  she  forgot  to  weary  herself  in  trying  to 
find  out  the  cause  of  her  aunt's  tempers  and  her  own  shortcom- 
^i!trs.  But  when  Mrs.  Hamley  found  that  her  niece  **  went  about 
with  Catherine  Fletcher,"  as  she  phrased  it,  she  interposed  and 
forbade  "  anything  of  the  kind."  Patricia  would  be  bringing 
home  some  horrid  disease,  she  said,  or  something  almost  worse 
than  disease.  She  would  not  have  her  made  "  as  common  "  as 
Catherine  Fletcher ;  she,  Patricia,  was  quite  enough  inclined 
as  it  was  to  be  vulgar  and  democratic,  and  everything  else  un- 
desirable. If  she  went  down  to  the  Hollies — though  why  she 
should  go  at  all  was  a  mystery  unaccountable  to  plain  people — 
she  must  promise  not  to  go  into  any  cottage  whatsoever.  Such 
absurdity  !  What  good  could  she  do  1  and  what  did  she  want 
with  dirty  children  and  coarse  women  1  She  was  far  better 
at  home  among  ladies  and  gentlemen.  And  so  on  ;  these  being 
the  texts  on  wliich  Mrs.  Hamley  preached  her  sermons  of  repro- 
bation whenever  her  niece  visited  her  father's  old  friend's. 

By  degrees,  however,  she  broke  up  the  girl's  pleasant  inter- 
course with  the  Hollies.  The  German  lessons  went  the  way  of 
the  cottage-visiting,  and  though  the  Fletchers  often  asked  for 
her,  permission  to  accept  their  invitations  became  daily  scarcer, 
and  when  granted,  drew  down  on  her  deeper  displeasure. 

Still  Patricia  had  their  counsel  when  she  needed  it.  She  was 
to  do  the  right  thing ;  there  was  never  any  doubt  on  that  score. 
She  was  to  be  patient  and  to  avoid  all  causes  of  offence ;  but 
when  the  choice  between  right  and  wrong,  truth  and  fair  seem- 
ing, shameful  obedience  or  noble  dissent,  came  before  her,  she 
was  to  hold  by  the  higher  law ;  and  if  she  had  to  suffer  because 
of  her  choice — well !  she  must  suffer,  and  bear  her  sorrow 
bravely. 

By  principle.  There  was  no  tampering  with  that  precept 
with  them.  But  then  it  was  not  always  the  best  thing,  they 
said,  to  speak  all  that  is  in  one's  mind  at  all  times.  The  gold 


BY  PRINCIPLE.  179 

of  silence  has  its  value ;  and  youth  must  learn  to  bear  much 
that  is  unpleasant  with  shut  lips,  patience,  and  forbearance  to 
oppose.  They  too  counselled  self-suppression  as  Dora  had  done, 
but  from  another  stand-point.  What  was  expediency  with  her 
was  heroism  with  them ;  and  under  their  direction  Patricia, 
though  not  changing  a  hair's  breadth  in  her  own  truth  and 
honesty,  learnt  so  much  of  the  wisdom  of  silence  and  the  gene- 
rosity of  non-condemnation,  as  to  become  noticeably  less  prone 
to  testify,  and  with  fewer  angularities  of  virtue. 

Mrs.  Harnley  said  she  had  grown  indifferent  and  nnaffec- 
tionate  ;  a  state,  however,  she  preferred  to  her  former  uncomfort- 
able activity,  though  preference  did  not  include  approbation. 
But  in  truth  Patricia  was  unable  to  please  her  aunt.  She  was 
out  of  harmony  with  the  central  point  of  the  girl's  character, 
and  no  method  of  life  or  action  radiating  therefrom  seemed  to 
be  beautiful  or  fitting. 


1  80  "  ^HAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ? ' 


CHAPTER  XVII 

LONG  FIELD  FARM. 

fHE  country  about  Milltown  had  been  originally  noted  for 
its  large  number  of  small  holdings,  in  the  days  when  the 
backbone  of  English  manliness  and  liberty  was  supposed 
to  exist  in  her  yeomanry  and  peasant  proprietors.  In  those 
days  small  farmers  had  possessed  the  greater  part  of  the  land  ; 
the  abbey  lands  which  had  been  assigned  by  Henry  the  Eighth, 
at  the  dissolution  of  the  monasteries,  to  the  Lord  Bareacres  of 
the  period,  having  been  gradually  disposed  of  by  the  descend- 
ants of  that  famous  nobleman,  field  by  field  and  farm  by  farm, 
till  the  greater  part  had,  as  has  been  said,  been  parcelled  out 
into  small  tenements.  The  nucleus,  however,  had  been 
always  held  together,  for  the  final  purpose  of  coming  into  the 
possession  of  Jabez  iiamley,  Ledbury's  successful  office-boy. 

The  progress  of  events  had  gradually  changed  the  land-hold- 
ing character  ot  Milltown,  and  a  new  order  of  gentlemen  owners 
had  dispossessed  the  old.  The  change  began  about  ninety  years 
ago,  after  the  great  continental  wars  had  enriched  certain 
army  contractors,  and  when  the  pagoda-tree  was  a  shrub  still 
worth  shaking  in  India;  and  it  had  gone  on  ever  since,  till  now 
only  one  or  two  of  the  original  peasant  proprietors  rauiained  in 
possession.  And  these  clung  tenaciously  to  their  holaings,  and 
resisted  all  the  temptation  of  long  prices  and  money  down  which 
the  rich  men  of  the  place,  and  notably  Mr.  Hamley,  offered  to 
get  them  out 

No  one  indeed  offered  such  advantageous  terms  for  fancy-bits 
as  did  the  owner  of  Abbey  Holme.  His  land-hunger  was  the 
fever  of  a  devouring  greed,  and  never  sated.  It  was  a  grief  to 
him  when  a  rood  of  ground  was  bought  by  any  one  but  himself, 
and  he  held  himself  personally  aggrieved  for  the  lose.  But  he 
never  confessed  that  he  had  been  balked,  and  you  could  only 
judge  of  his  mortification  by  the  way  in  which  he  depreciated 
the  value  of  the  farm  he  had  missed,  and  hia  loud  asseverations 


LONG    FIELD  FARM.  181 

that  the  concluding  purchaser  had  given  thrice  its  proper  value, 
and  that  he  would  not  have  had  it  for  half  that  sum.  His 
schemes  were  always  active.  He  had  corners  full  fifteen  miles 
off;  wedges  that  he  had' inserted  in  his  neighbours' estates  with 
the  hope  of  driving  them  home  to  his  own  park  gates ;  and  bit 
by  bit  he  was  creeping  round  the  local  map,  colouring  it  so 
frequently  with  the  Hamley  crimson  till  now  the  very  Quest 
itself  had  not  such  a  large  tract  surrounding  it  as  Abbey 
Holme.  The  brewer  against  the  earl ;  and  the  brewer  had  the 
best  of  it. 

Perhaps  even  a  greater  grief  than  the  occasional  loss  of  a  field 
or  a  spinney  he  desired  to  add  to  his  estate,  was  the  fact  that 
he  had  no  children  to  cfcry  on  his.  name  and  inherit  his  pro- 
perty. Man-like,  the  idea  of  founding  a  family  was  sweet  to 
him  ;  and  now  that  he  had  obtained  and  won  other  things  he 
wanted,  his  wishes  went  all  the  more  strongly  in  this  direction. 
Sometimes  he  reflected  for  his  comfort  that  he  was  only  forty- 
five  years  of  age  all  told ;  that  Mrs.  Hamley  was  twenty  years 
his  senior ;  and  that  Providence  was  often  merciful,  and 
removed  to  a  better  world  elderly  women  who  had  begun  to 
get  nuisances  in  this.  What  ulterior  objects  he  might  have, 
should  fate  be  kind  enough  to  kill  Mrs.  Hamley,  he  never  told 
to  living  soul.  It  was  enough  for  him  that  he  pondered  on  them 
in  secret,  and  limed  the  twig  for  those  birds  in  the  bush  of  the 
future,  which  he  had  arranged  with  himself  to  catch.  Mrs. 
Hamley  had  done  the  work  for  which  he  had  bought  her ;  she 
had  placed  him  among  the  gentry  of  the  place,  and  taught  him 
the  alphabet  of  good  manners.  And  having  done  this,  now,  like 
one  who  has  fulfilled  her  life's  mission,  she  was  free  to  depart 
to  her  own  place  so  soon  as  it  should  seem  good  to  her,  leaving 
the  ground  open  to  another. 

Meanwhile,  the  land-hunger  must  be  fed;  field  added  to  field, 
farm  to  farm,  and  every  corner  of  wood  and  meadow  bought  as 
eagerly  as  if  each  crooked  elm  had  been  a  sapling  oak,  and  all 
the  worthless  alders  hereditary  yews.  Wherever  he  appeared 
competition  was  useless,  because  his  final  offer  was  sure  to  be 
in  excess  of  the  market  value.  This  made  it  good  for  the  sel- 
ler; if,  on  the  other  hand,  the  temptation  of  a  fancy  price 
induced  men  to  sell  who  might  have  held  on  ;  and  thus  made 
homeless  wanderers,  and  sometimes  ruined  speculators,  of  those 


182  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

who  might  have  continued  in  the  old  path  of  self-respecting 
independence  and  English  propiietorship. 

Also,  if  he  was  so  far  a  benefactor  to  the  world  at  large  in 
that  he  was  a  good  agricultural  chemist  and  farmed  high,  to 
the  small  world  near  at  hand  he  was  by  no  means  a  blessing. 
He  was  a  hard  landlord,  heart  and  hand,  and  if  he  gave  employ- 
ment he  added  sorrow  to  the  wages.  He  beat  men  down  at 
every  point,  and  took  advantage  of  all  collateral  depressions  in 
the  labour  market.  He  grudged  his  labourers  all  but  the  bare 
life,  and  thought  comfort,  pleasure,  education,  refinement  for 
"  common  people,"  not  only  foolish  but  positively  wicked.  He 
denied  with  his  whole  force  the  doctrine  that  the  poor  had 
rights.  They  were  simply  to  him  the  pabulum,  the  footstools, 
the  hands  and  energies  of  the  rich,  and  capital  was  superior  to 
humanity.  Rights  ?  No !  "  What  is  mine  is  my  own,"  was 
a  i'avourite  aphorism  of  his  and  he  acted  on  it. 

One  of  the  objects  of  his  ambition — his  ambition  never  extend- 
ing beyond  worldly  things1 — had  been  to  own  a  deer-park. 
There  had  been  one  at  Abbey  Holme  long  ago  when  the  jolly 
old  monks  had  preached  repentance  and  poverty  to^he  godless 
laity,  but  had  taken  care  to  pad  their  own  crosses  with  silk 
and  wool,  and  to  live' on  the  fat  of  the  land  while  they  eulogised 
the  lean.  And  Mr.  Hamley  had  determined  that  he  would 
restore  it.  To  do  this  he  had  dismantled  a  hamlet  which 
had  grown  up  on  the  old  site  of  the  deer-forest,  evicting  the 
cottagers  with  no  more  pity  or  scruple  than  if  they  had  been  so 
many  rats  which  he  had  smoked  out  of  their  holes.  His  en- 
forced exodus  cost  the  lives  of  a  few  infants  and  aged  folks. 
What  did  that  signify  1  The  poor  are  too  numerous  as  it  is  :  a 
little  thinning  is  an  advantage.  He  was  famous  too,  for  pulling 
down  the  cottages  on  his  estate  ;  making  his  labourers  walk  to 
iheir  work  sometimes  five  or  six  miles  out  and  the  like  dis- 
cance  in.  Buildings,  he  said,  were  only  so  many  drains  on 
capital ;  and' as  his  highest  idea  of  a  man's  life  was  the  profita- 
ble employment  of  capital,  duty  to  those  under  him  had  no 
place  in  his  creed  and  formed  no  part  of  his  practice.  For  duty 
is  generally  an  expensive  luxury  ;  and  Mr.  Hamley  did  not 
care  for  expensive  luxuries  which  make  no  show,  soothe  no 
sense,  and  bring  no  renown. 

In  all  these  circumstances  then,  it  cannot  be  wondered  at  if 


LONG   FIELD    FARM.  183 

Mr.  Hatnley,  buying  above  market  value  every  acre  there  was 
to  sell,  evicting  his  labourers  like  vermin,  farming  high  but 
paying  low,  should  be  at  once  the  most  influential  and  the  most 
unpopular  man  to  be  found  in  the  district.  He  was  even  more 
disliked  than  Colonel  Lowe  ;  who,  if  he  let  his  tenants  live  like 
beasts  in  hovels  that  were  not  fit  for  beasts,  and  that  stood  at 
comparatively  enormous  rents,  had  a  kind  of  excuse  in  that  he 
was  not  over  well  off  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other,  that  he 
was  agentleman  and  had  thus  an  inherited  right  to  treat  the  poor 
like  beasts.  It  is  a  way  some  gentlemen  have.  But  when  it  came 
to  a  man  popularly  supposed  to  possess  millions — a  man  who, 
as  a  ragged,  barefooted  lad,  had  known  what  it  was  to  want  a 
dinner  more  often  than  to  have  one,  who  had  been  thrashed  for 
stealing  turnips  as  the  stopgaps  of  his  emptiness,  Knd  who  had 
been  fed  by  some  of  the  very  men,  or  their  fathers,  whom  he 
now  turned  adrift — when  it  came  to  such  as  he  grinding  the 
faces  of  the  poor  to  the  earth,  was  it  to  be  wondered  at  if  he 
was  hated  1  And  to  do  the  Milltown  labourers  justice,  they  did 
hate  him. 

There  was  a  certain  farm  at  the  north  end  of  the  Abbey 
Holme  estate  that  had  long  been  Mr.  Hamley's  Naboth's  vine- 
yard. It  stood  .  right  in  amongst  his  property,  and  was  the 
thorn  in  his  chaplet  of  roses,  the  poison  in  his  cup  of  sweets. 
Long  Field  aggrieved  him.  It  Avas  a  standing  injury  to  the 
symmetry  of  his  ring-fence,  an  enduring  scoff  at  the  wholeness 
of  his  ownership ;  and  he  coveted  it.  It  never  occurred  to  him 
that  James  Garth  had  inherited  that  land  from  his  father  and 
forbears  ever  since  King  Henry's  time,  and  that  it  was  he,  Mr. 
Hamley,  who  had  come  in  as  the  remover  of  old-time  fences 
by  his  golden  spade,  not  James  Garth  and  his  title-deeds  that 
stood  as  the  obstruction.  When  men  are  annoyed  by  circum- 
stances they  do  not  care  to  consider  whether  they  have  volun- 
tarily put  themselves  in  the  way  of  those  circumstances  or  not; 
but  speak  as  if  they  had  been  hemmed  round  by  them  without 
their  own  assistance.  In  this  case  it  was  simply  Ote-toi  que  je 
m'y  mets ;  and  the  refusal  was  accounted  both  an  insolence  and 
a  wrong. 

Things  had  not  gone  well  with  James  Garth.  His  father 
had  been  a  hard  liver  in  his  time,  too  fond  of  the  hounds  and 
.  too  free  with  the  bottle  to  succeed  in  his  life's  business,  which 


184  "WHAT  \VOT.TT,r>  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

was  to  clean  and  crop  his  farm.  Consequently  the  business  he 
neglected  failed  to  do  well  by  him.  When  he  died  he  left  a 
handful  of  debts  which  came  like  a  shower  of  hail  about  his 
son's  ears,  and  which  had  crippled  his  energies  to  pay  off.  For 
James  was  a  man  with  an  immense  amount  of  family  pride.  Not 
pride  of  that  flashy  kind  which  thinks  no  one  good  enough  for  it, 
but  pride  that  cares  to  keep  the  family  name  unstained  and  the 
family  honour  bright ;  pride  that  is  only  another  form  of  self- 
respect,  incapable  of  meanness  and  to  which  treachery  is  as  im- 
possible. 

But  beside  this  characteristic,  James  Garth  had  also  more 
than  the  average  share  of  hope.  He  was  sanguine  by  tempera- 
ment, and  always  believed  the  better  thing  ;  and  so  had  borne 
his  heavy  burdens  with  a  gallant  courage,  a  simple  faith  in  Pro- 
vidence and  the  turn  of  the  lane,  that  gave  an  almost  heroic 
flavour  to  his  constancy.  The  two  things  which  were  as  his 
very  life's  blood  to  him  were,  to  redeem  his  father's  debts  and 
keep  a  good  name.  But  just  in  proportion  to  his  hope,  his 
energy,  his  pride,  while  things  were  well  with  him,  would  be 
the  collapse — if  it  came. 

The  struggle  was  an  arduous  one.  He  had  a  good  wife  and 
a  large  family  ;  a  wife  who  had  wrought  her  i1  ly's  work  loyally, 
made  the  best  of  everything,  wasted  nothing,  borne  him  a 
child  every  two  years  as  regularly  as  the  birds  brought  forth 
their  young  in  spring  time,  and  given  the  children  good  health, 
good  food,  and  a  bright  example.  These  young  ones  would  be 
all  of  use  by-and-bye,  but  most  of  them  were  mere  infants  and 
children  yet ;  and  only  one  or  two  had  got  forward  on  their 
own  account.  James,  the  eldest,  of  course  stayed  with  his 
father,  so  did  Robert,  the  next  lad  ;  but  Alice,  the  eldest 
daughter,  had  gone  out  to  service,  and  was  now  acting  as  lady's 
maid  to  Miss  Drummond. 

This  had  been  a  little  hard  at  the  first  to  Garth,  owing  to 
special  circumstances  connected  with  Mr.  Hamley ;  else  he 
would  not  have  minded.  His  pride  was  not  of  that  sort.  He 
was  only  a  peasant  proprietor  at  the  best,  and  he  aimed  at 
nothing  higher.  He  scarcely  saw  the  need.  He  did  not  care 
to  bring  up  his  children  on  strawberries  and  cream  like  fine 
ladies,  he  said,  but  would  rather  let  them  take  the  rough  of  the 
world  as  well  as  the  smooth  ;  and  he  thought  it  no  shame  that 


LONG   FIELD   FARM.  185 

Alice  should  take  suit  and  service  in  a  stranger's  house,  for  all 
that  the  title-deeds  of  his  farm,  lying  "in  the  old  black  chest, 
were  dated  1540.  But  it  had  cost  him  a  struggle  to  let  her  go 
to  Jahez  Hamley's.;  though  in  the  end  common  sense  had  con- 
quered prejudice. 

Besides  this  large  family  and  his  father's  debts,  James  Garth 
had  made  a  bad  speculation.  A  man  came  down  from  London 
and  persuaded  him  that  he  had  ironstone  on  his  land,  and  that 
he  had  only  to  set  about  with  a  pickaxe  and  a  few  charges  of 
gunpowder  to  make  as  much  money  as  the  owner  of  Abbey 
Holme  had  made  out  of  his  brewing  vats.  So  he  set  to  work 
and  tore  his  land  into  holes  here,  and  piled  it  into  hummncks 
there,  and  lost  his  money  and  his  time  for  the  better  part  of 
six  months.  And  when  all  was  doue  he  found  that  he  had 
been  fooled,  and  that  he  had  spent  his  strength  in  slinging 
another  millstone  round  his  neck  in  addition  to  those  made 
out  of  his  father's  debts,  his  round  dozen  of  children  to  feed 
and  clothe,  and  his  want  of  capital  to  enable  him  to  keep  pace 
with  modern  improvements  ;  whereby  he  was  ever  at  a  disad- 
vantage. For  naturally  the  more  a  man  puts  into  his  land  the 
more  he  gpts  out  of  it.  A  year  or  two  of  bad  harvests  had  also 
made  their  mark  ;  and  the  turn  in  the  long  lane  in  which  poor 
Garth  so  courageously  believed  seemed  farther  off  than  ever. 

There  was  no  doubt  about  it.  Set  in  the  midst  of  Mr. 
Hamley's  well-cleaned,  steam-cultivated,  lordly  acres,  Long 
Field  had  a  ragged  poverty-stricken  look  that  destroyed  the 
harmony  of  the  landscape ;  and  its  dandelions  and  thistles 
were  an  abomination.  Nothing  disguised,  nothing  extenuated, 
it  was  a  rough  bit  of  country,  and  by  no  means  farmed  up  to 
its  capabilities  ;  but  it  was  the  man's  own,  and  his  all.  And 
Mr.  Hamley  had  no  philanthropic  desire  of  adding  to  the 
world's  wealth  in  getting  possession  of  it  if  he  could.  It  was 
merely  that  it  stood  in  the  midst  of  his  own  estate,  and  he 
wanted  his  ring-fence  to  be  symmetrical ;  besides  having  that 
land-hunger  on  him,  exaggerated  to  voracity,  which  nothing 
short  of  inability  to  buy  more  would  ever  satisfy. 

The  creditors  whom  Garth  had  been  obliged  to  make  on  his 
own  account  were  now  pressing  on  him.  It  had  been  a  glad 
day  for  the  poor  fellow  when  he  had  cleared  his  lather's  repu- 
tation ;  and  no  Chinaman  ever  burnt  incense  before  the  tomb 


186  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

of  his  ancestors  with  more  hearty  satisfaction  to  his  conscience 
than  that  which  James  Garth  felt  when  he  received  the  last 
receipt  in  full  of  all  demands  on  the  outstanding  accounts,  and 
brushed  the  last  remains  of  dishonour  from  the  old  free-liver's 
memory.  But  he  had  done  this  only  at  the  cost  of  new  lia- 
bilities contracted  on  his  own  hand  ;  and  with  these  and  the 
losses  occasioned  by  short  crops  and  the  man  who  had  talked 
of  ironstone  and  prophesied  millions,  things  never  looked 
worse  for  him.  Take  it  how  he  might,  there  was  a  sore  pinch 
before  him,  and  he  saw  no  way  out  of  it  save  by  borrowing  on 
the  security  of  the  land,  which  had  enough  to  do  to  support 
him  and  his  without  drawbacks. 

All  of  which  Mr.  Hamley  knew  like  the  alphabet.  Was  not 
Alice  Dora  Drummond's  maid  I — and  were  the  tears  so  often 
HI  her  eyes  for  nothing  1  Besides,  land-hunger  is  like  any 
other  instinct,  keen  in  scenting  its  food  and  absolute  in  its  need 
of  satisfaction  ;  and  Mr.  Hamley's  knowledge  of  the  fields  and 
farms  that  would  fall  to  the  first  bidder,  and  which  he  had 
only  to  ride  over  to  the  house-door  to  secure,  and  of  those 
which  must  eventually  come  into  the  market  and  were  to  be 
had  for  patient  waiting,  was  almost  like  an  added  sense,  it  was 
so  acute  and  unerring. 

"  Well,  wife,  I  shall  have  to  do  it  at  last ! "  said  James,  look- 
ing up  from  a  dirty  piece  of  paper  that  had  done  service  tor  a 
letter,  and  which  his  eldest  son  had  just  brought  up  from  the 
town.  It  was  a  letter  from  Cooper  the  wheelwright,  who  had 
just  lent  him  three  hundred  pounds,  and  now  wanted  it  back 
again  without  deluy.  And  there  were  Jones  and  Martin  and 
Grace,  all  of  whom  had  lent  him  money  to  go  on  with,  and  all 
of  whom  would  begin  to  clamour  like  birds  in  a  nest,  and  to 
press  their  claims  in  a  body  if  Cooper  got  paid  and  they  were 
left  out. 

"  What  is  it,  James,  my  man  1 "  asked  his  wife.  The  two  were 
sitting  in  the  kitchen  at  noonday  while  the  boys  were  gather- 
ing in  to  dinner.  Mrs.  Garth,  with  one  child  at  her  foot  in  the 
cradle  and  another  at  her  knee,  was  knitting  a  coarse  blue 
stocking,  while  her  husband  smoked  his  pipe  in  the  chimney- 
corner  and  the  pot  bubbled  and  hissed  over  the  fire.  It  was  a 
cold  raw  day,  and  the  light  and  warmth  of  the  kitchen  were 
pleasant. 


LONG    FIELD   FARM.  187 

"  What  will  you  have  to  do  ?  "she  repeated. 

"  Lay  a  mortgage  on  the  laud,"  said  James,  his  eyes  turned 
to  the  sanded  floor,  as  if  he  could  see  his  difficulties  collected 
there. 

"Aye  ?  that  sounds  a  bit  awful,"  said  Mrs.  Garth. 

"  As  bad  as  may  be,"  her  husband  answered.  "  It  seems 
just  like  a  break  ;  the  beginning  of  an  upset  root  and  branch," 

"  Why,  James  !  that's  not  like  you  to  look  at  the  black  side 
end  foremost,  and  cry  out  before  you  are  hurt !  "  said  Mrs. 
Garth  cheerily. 

"  Nay,  it  ain't,"  he  answered  back ;  "  but  somehow  I  am 
more  down  at  this  than  I  have  ever  been  before.  It  seems  as 
if  it  would  never  end,  and  I  feel  as  if  the  place  was  slipping 
out  of  my  hand  somehow." 

He  sighed,  and  he  seldom  sighed,  as  he  looked  round  with  a 
kind  of  friendly  fondness  on  all  the  things  he  knew  so  well  and 
that  were  so  full  of  old  associations.  His  mother's  samplers 
and  his  grandmother's,  worked  in  silk  with  peacocks  and 
quaint  pyramidal  trees,  and  "Anne  Fletcher"  signed  to  one 
in  cross-barrea  letters,  and  "  Alice  Jones"  to  the  other  ;  things 
that  he  had  always  regarded  as  the  highest  efforts  of  creative 
genius  in  their  way,  sublime  in  industry  and  purely  useless  in 
intent;  he  would  be  sorry  to  part  with  them  now,  and  sud- 
denly they  took  a  value  in  his  eyes  they  had  never  had  before. 
Then  there  was  the  old  china  teapot,  and  some  blue  Delft 
plates  that  had  been  brought  over  by  his  uncle  who  had  been  a 
seafaring  man,  and  had  visited  fojjei^a  parts  ;  and  the  sea-shells 
on  the  mantlepiece  in  among  the  flat  candlesticks  and  teacaddy, 
with  one  delicate  vase  of  Venetian  glass  with  a  twisted  thread 
run  through  its  stem,  filled  with  small  cowries,  that  had  an  al- 
most superstitious  value  in  the  family  eyes.  There  was  the  old 
Dutch  clock  that  ticked  as  it  had  ticked  when  he  was  a  boy, 
with  the  cuckoo  that  came  out  of  the  little  door  when  the  hours 
struck,  and  chirped  them  as  loud  and  natural  as  the  real  thing. 
How  he  had  wondered  at  that  cuckoo  when  he  was  a  little  lad  ! 
— and  how  he  liked  to  see  his  mother  draw  up  the  weights 
with  a  noise  that  made  his  flesh  tingle  with  a  pleasant  sense  of 
awesome  fear,  just  the  same  as  his  own  little  ones  felt  now  as 
they  peeped  behind  their  mother's  skirts  when  she  drew  up 
the  chains,  and  they  saw  the  big  old  pendulum  swing  from  side 


188  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

to  side  as  if  it  had  life  and  a  voice.  The  carved  high-backed 
oaken  chairs,  and  the  old  carved  bureau  for  which  once  a  gen- 
tleman staying  at  Abbey  Holme  offered  him  twenty  pounds — 
he  almost  wished  now  that  he  had  lost  the  chest  and  taken  the 
money  ;  the  sanded  floor  where  he  and  his  brotheis  had  bored 
holes,  and  the  father  had  called  them  worms  ;  the  deep  chim- 
ney-place with  a  settle  at  each  side,  where  the  pot  was  hanging 
with  the  dinner  of  potato-stew  seething  over  the  peat  fire  ;  the 
rack  where  the  guns  and  whips  hung;  the  shelves  among  the 
rafters  where  the  wife  kept  her  stores  out  of  the  reach  of  small 
marauding  hands  : — all  these  thousand  trifles  which  make  up 
home  seemed  to  come  before  him  with  more  vitality,  more 
rooting  power  than  they  had  ever  had  before,  and  to  render 
the  possibilities  of  his  position  more  bitter. 

Just  then  came  riding  up  Mr.  Hamley  of  Abbey  Holme.  He 
had  been  to  his  plantation  ahead,  and  he  thought  he  would  look 
in  at  Long  Field  on  his  way  back.  He  had  seen  Cooper  the 
wheelwright  yesterday,  and  had  told  him  carelessly,  as  a  matter 
of  common  knowledge,  that  Garth  was  insolvent  out  and  out ; 
and  that  his  creditors  would  not  get  sixpence  in  the  pound  if 
they  did  not  look  sharp.  Farming  at  a  loss  was  not  a  good 
groundwork  for  the  liquidation  of  outstanding  debts,  he  had 
said ;  and  for  his  own  part  he  was  glad  he  had  none  of  his 
money  lying  among  the  Long  Field  weeds,  for  he  should  as 
soon  expect  to  shovel  up  last  year's  snow  as  to  see  a  penny  of 
it  back  again  if  it  had  once  got  into  James  Garth's  hands. 

He  had  had  no  qualms  of  conscience  in  saying  all  this. 
Garth  would  be  forced  to  sell,  he  argued — for  the  good  of  the 
Abbey  Holme  estate — and  it  was  ridiculous  his  holding  on. 
Anything  therefore  that  would  hasten  that  necessity  was  so  far 
to  the  right  side  of  the  general  account,  if  to  the  wrong  of  poor 
Garth's,  individually. 

"  But  the  world  is  made  up  of  the  individuals  who  succeed 
and  those  who  fail,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  flinging  back  his  coat ; 
"  and  every  man  has  the  power  to  choose  which  he  will  be.  I 
chose  the  first,  and  James  Garth  has  selected  the  second  ;  con- 
sequently, I  have  purchased  Abbey  Holme  and  he  will  have  to 
sell  Long  Field." 

This  was  an  epigrammatic  way  of  putting  matters  that  pleased 
him ;  and  Cooper  thought  that  a  man  who  spoke  so  sharp 


LONG   FIELD   FARM.  189 

must  have  a  judgment  to  match  ;  as  poor  Garth  found  out  to- 
day when  he  came  in  from  mending  a  few  fenc.es  to  his  dinner 
of  potato-stew,  and  to  exchange  a  loving  word  with  his  wife 
and  children. 

Mr.  Hamley  rode  up  to  the  farm-house  door,  and  his  man  in 
his  smart  groom's  livery  took  his  horse  as  he  dismounted. 

"  Well,  James,"  he  said,  stooping  as  he  came  through  the 
doorway  ;  which  he  need  not  have  done. 

He  was  very  spruce  in  his  dark  blue  overcoat  with  its  broad 
velvet  collar ;  very  clean  about  his  close-shaven  chin  ;  very 
sleek  and  prosperous,  and  well  got  up  from  head  to  heel ;  and 
not  in  any  way  like  the  lad  who  had  many  a  time  held  old 
Garth's  horse  for  a  penny,  and  more  than  once  been  fed  at  the 
farm  as  you  would  feed  a  tramp  or  a  stray  dog. 

"  My  man,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  "  you  should  keep  your  land 
cleaner.  Yon  fields  of  yours  are  not  fit  for  pigs.  What  with 
stones  and  weeds,  they  are  fairly  a  disgrace,  and  that's  a  fact." 

"  I  see  nothing  amiss  with  them,"  replied  James  a  trifle 
surlily. 

He  was  nettled  at  the  rich  man's  superior  manner.  It  al- 
ways did  nettle  him. 

"  You  want  more  capital,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  pompously,  but 
with  the  carelessness  of  one  to  whom  capital  is  plentiful ;  speak- 
ing as  if  he  had  said  that  Garth  wanted  more  chaff,  more  straw, 
more  sand. 

"  That's  sooner  said  nor  done,"  said  James,  his  Saxon  face 
aflame. 

He  was  a  fair,  ruddy  man  of  forty-two  or  so  ;  in  his  prime ; 
genial,  openbrowed,  frank;  a  good-tempered  fellow,  but' quick 
too ;  a  man  whose  blood  was  not  sluggish,  yet  more  passionate 
thati  rancorous ;  but  a  man  wanting  mental  fibre  of  a  kind,  and 
to  be  overcome  by  an  adverse  fate. 

"  I  was  hearing  at  the  town  that  Cooper  was  coming  on  you," 
continued  Mr.  Hamley. 

"  Ay  ?  that  is  strange  now,"  said  Garth. 

"  It  will  be  a  heavy  pull  to  pay  him  off,"  said  Mr.  Hamley. 

"  Ay,"  he  repeated  ;  "  you  are  about  right  there." 

"  I  wonder  you  don't  sell  the  place  for  what  it  will  fetch," 
said  Mr.  Hamley.  "  It's  worsening  year  by  year,  and  you'll  go 
under  with  it." 


190  '-WHAT  v.x'LD  vr.f-  no,  LOVE:-" 

"I'll  not  sell,  and  I'll  stick  to  the  land,"  said  James  slowly. 

"  Well,  you  are  your  own  man,  and  can  do  as  you  please ; 
but  I'd  give  you  a  tidy  price  for  it  if  you  liked  to  sell,"  Mr. 
Hamley  said  with  a  familiar  tone  and  a  broader  accent  than 
that  which  Mrs.  Hamley  had  taught  him  to  use.  We're  old 
acquaintances  now,  Garth,  and  1  remember  when  your  father 
was  a  man  above  my  height.  You'd  rather  see  the  laud  in  my 
hands,  I  imagine,  than  in  a  stranger's;  and  I'd  do  justice  by  it 
and  you." 

"  I'll  hold  on,"  said  James. 

"You  will?  Hold  on  to  what?  A  bunch  of  weeds  and  a 
bed  of  thistles !  What's  the  good  of  holding  on  to  land  you 
can't  farm,  man  1  I'd  sell  it  if  I  was  you,  and  could  get  my 
price." 

"  No,  you  wouldn't  sell  if  you  was  me,  if  even  you  could  get 
your  price,"  retorled  James.  "  What  your  father  had  left  you, 
you'd  like  to  leave  to  your  son — as  I  do,  and  as  every  English- 
man would,  if  he  could.  I'd  liefer  have  a  rood  of  English  land 
than  a  dozen  acres  in  a  foreign  country,"  said  James. 

"  Stuff !  you  carry  your  country  on  your  back,"  said  Mr. 
Hamley.  "  A  man's  country  is  where  he  can  buy  the  best  coat 
and  get  the  best  dinner.  Country  !  what  signifies  country, 
when  they  can  speak  the  language  like  yourself?  The  Ameri- 
cans are  English,"  he  added  with  ethnological  generosity  ;  "  and 
America's  the  place  where  a  handy  man  like  you  would  make 
his  fortune." 

"Mr.  Hamley,"  said  James  Garth  suddenly,  "you've  made 
your  offer,  and  you've  had  your  answer.  Ill  not  sell  till  the 
bailies  take  me,  and  I'll  not  cry  caught  till  the  game's  lost. 
Now,  wife,  if  you'll  turn  out  the  pot  perhaps  Mr.  Hamley  '11 
take  a  bit  of  dinner  with  us.  It  would  not  be  the  first,  I 
reckon,  he's  had  at  Long  Field,  by  many." 

"  Thank  you  ;  no.  I  shall  partake  of  lunch  at  home,"  said 
Mr.  Hamley,  with  a  sudden  return  to  his  finer  manner,  and  an 
angry  flash  in  his  small  dark  eyes.  "  I  think  you're  foolish, 
James,  but  we  have  good  authority  for  not  meddling  with  a 
man's  folly ;  and  so  I  leave  you  to  yours.  Good  day.  Good 
day,  Mrs.  Gartk" 

"  Good  day,  sir,"  said  Mis.  Garfcli,  with  a  curtsey.  *  And 
how's  Alice  coming  on  ? " 


LONG   FIELD   FARM.  191 

"  Oh,  very  fair,  I  fancy,"  answered  Mr.  Hamley  condescend- 
ingly. "  She's  young  yet,  but  she'll  improve ;  and  I  don't  hear 
Miss  Drummond  complain." 

"I'm  glad  she  suits,"  said  the  mother  respectfully,  as  so 
much  useful  capital  of  which  her  daughter  might  have  the  in- 
terest. "  My  duty,  sir,  to  your  lady  and  Miss  Drummond." 

"  Good  day,  Mr.  Hamley,"  said  James  curtly.  "  Now,  wife, 
the  dinner." 

"  Curse  the  fellow's  insolence  !  "  muttered  the  rich  man  as 
he  rode  off. 

James  Garth  repeated  the  same  words  as  he  sat  down  to  his 
dinner  with  a  heavy  heart  and  a  hot  head,  and  the  most  pas- 
sionate desire  to  break  Jabez  Hamley's. 

And  yet  what  had  Hamley  done  ?  Literally  a  kindness,  ac- 
cording to  his  way  of  putting  it.  He  had  offered  a  thousand 
pounds  clear  gain  over  and  above  the  market  value  of  a  piece 
of  badly  farmed  land — that  is,  he  would  have  made  a  clean  gift 
of  the  same  to  induce  an  insolvent  landowner  to  sell  what  he 
could  not  keep.  Garth,  perversely  perhaps,  took  it  that  his 
father's  former  charity-lad  had  traded  on  his  necessities,  and 
offered  him  a  bribe  to  let  go  his  cherished  patrimony.  It  was 
common  sense  and  feeling — the  logic  of  wealth  dealing  with 
poverty  according  to  material  values  and  outside  human  emo- 
tions, and  the  passionate  anguish  of  a  luckless  man  rebelling 
against  facts  and  logic,  and  asking  only  help  and  sympathy. 


Ida 


WHAT  WOULD  vor  DO,  LOVE  ? " 


CHAPTER  XVIIL 

LATE  FOR  LUNCHEON. 


Cbi 

pTLNSTEAD  of  turning  in 
Jlf    he  passed  them  on  his  i 


at  the  Abbey  Holme  gates  when 
way  from  Long  Field,  Mr.  Hamley 
did  violence  to.  the  domestic  institution  of  luncheon,  and 
cantered  off  to  Milltown.  He  thought  it  best  to  take  time  by  the 
forelock,  and  to  have  the  first  word  with  Mr.  Simpson,  the  local 
lawyer,  before  Garth  could  put  in  his  oar.  So,  grievously  har- 
assing that  unfortunate  gentleman  by  his  untimely  visit,  dis- 
turbing him  at  his  dinner,  much  to  Mrs.  Simpson's  disgust, 
spoiling  his  food  and  deranging  his  digestion,  he  opened  at 
once  on  his  business. 

He  had  no  need  to  manage  appearances  with  Mr.  Simpson. 
He  had  long  ago  bought  him,  body  and  soul,  and  hold  him  in 
his  hand  able  to  crush  him  at  a  moment's  notice.  The  lawyer 
had  nothing  for  it,  then,  bub  a  flexible  back-bone  ana  a  plastic 
conscience  ;  and  to  keep  on  good  terms  with  his  master  and 
creditor,  let  what  would  stand  in  his  path  or  be  trampled  out 
of  it,  was  the  only  way  open  to  him.  Milltown,  by-the-by, 
wondered  that  Mr.  Hamley,  who  did  everything  in  such  a  gran- 
diose manner,  and  who  never  touched  clay  when  he  could 
handle  gold,  should  employ  Simpson  at  all.  A  low-class, 
second-rate  man  as  he  was,  it  was  odd  that  the  eminently  res- 
pectable, self-made  master  of  Abbey  Holme  should  stand  by 
him  rather  than  by  Mr.  Perkins,  who  was  at  the  head  of  his  pro- 
fession in  these  parts,  and  was  a  really  honourable  and  worthy 
gentleman.  But  Mr.  Hamley  gave  it  as  his  reason  that  Simp- 
son had  once  been  kind  to  him  in  the  days  when  he  needed  a 
friend  ;  "  and  I  never  forget  a  kindness  and  never  forsake  a 
friend,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  of  Abbey  Holme,  airing  his  gratitude 
ostentatiously. 

"  Simpson,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  abruptly,  as  the  lawyer,  a  sandy- 
haired,  red-eyed,  furtive  kind  of  person,  came  sideways  into 


LATE  FOB  LUNCHEON.  193 

the  room,  "  you'll  be  hearing  from  James  Garth,  of  Long  Field, 
one  of  these  fine  days." 

"  Yes,  sir,  so  I  anticipate,"  said  Mr.  Simpson.  "  By  all  ac- 
counts, he's  in  a  bad  way,  is  James." 

"  Couldn't  be  worse,"  said  Mr.  Haniley.  Then,  after  a  pause ; 
"  There's  Cooper  pressing  him  for  money,  and  the  fool  refuses 
to  sell." 

"  Cooper  pressing  him  for  money  and  he  refuses  to  sell ; 
what  a  fool  indeed,  as  you  say,  sir  !  "  echoed  Mr.  Simpson. 

"  I  have  just  offered  him  two  thousand  for  his  farm,  and  he 
says  no,"  continued  Mr.  Hamley,  in  an  injured  tone. 

"  Two  thousand,  and  he  says  no ;  he  doesn't  see  his  own  in- 
terest ,"  repeated  Simpson. 

That's  what  I  told  him  not  half  an  hour  ago;  but  Lord  !  you 
might  as  well  speak  to  a  stone  wall  as  to  him !  He's  blind  and 
deaf  and  stupid,  that's  what  he  is  ;  and  he  can't  see  his  bread 
when  it's  stuck  under  his  nose  buttered-side  uppermost.  He's 
the  most  of  a  pig's-head  I've  ever  come  across,  and  he'll  have  to 
suffer  for  his  folly.  Such  men  always  do." 

"  No  doubt,  sir,  no  doubt.  As  you  say,  such  men  always  do. 

I'm  sorry  for  him,  but  if  he  will  cut  his  own  throat — why " 

The  lawyer  spread  out  his  hands,  and  shrugged  his  shoulders, 
intimating  that  he  abandoned  James  Garth  to  that  interesting 
operation,  and  washed  his  hands  of  all  responsibility  in  the 
matter  of  sharpening  the  razors. 

"  Sorry  for  him !  "  said  Mr.  Hamley  fiercely  ;  "  how  can  you 
be  such  a  fool  as  to  say  that,  Simpson  ?  Sorry  for  a  born  jackass 
who  won't  take  advice,  and  pocket  a  cool  thousand  when  it's 
given  him  !" 

"  Well,  not  exactly  sorry  perhaps,  but  one  would  rather  see 
him  wiser,"  apologized  the  lawyer,  bowing. 

Mr.  Hamley  frowned.  "  I  don't  do  much  myself  in  the  way 
of  soft  soap  and  sawder,"  he  said  insolently  ;  "  I  leave  that  to 
you,  Simpson.  And  as  for  wishing  him  anyways  different  to 
what  he  is,  you  might  as  well  wish  a  mole  was  a  hawk  and  that 
geese  didn't  cackle." 

The  lawyer  laughed  and  smoothed  his  hair.     "  He  !  he!  he! 

you'll  excuse  me,  Mr.  Hamley,  but  you  are  so  very  funny,  sir  !  " 

he  said.     "  As  I  always  say,  if  you  want  to  hear  what  I  call  a 

regular  out-and-out  good  thing,  there's  no  one  that  conies  near 

M 


194  "WHAT  WOCLD  \vr  DO.  T.OVE?" 

Mr.  Hamley  of  Abbey  Holme.  That's  the  genuine  article  and 
no  mistake  ! " 

"  Well,  I  always  was  accounted  a  droll  dog,"  answered  Mr. 
Hamley  with  a  self-satisfied  smile,  stretching  out  his  legs  and 
running  his  fingers  through  his  bushy  black  whiskers.  "  Many's 
the  time  I've  kept  them  all  in  a  roar  down  at  Ledbury's  when 
I  was  junior  and  hadn't  what  one  may  call  so  much  to  keep  up 
as  now.  I  was  king  of  my  company,  that's  what  I  was,  and 
could  cut  a  joke  or  sing  a  song  with  the  best  of  them." 

"  That's  what  all  Milltown  says,  sir  ! "  cried  Mr.  Simpson 
enthusiastically. 

"  And  Milltown  has  made  worse  guesses  in  its  day  and  been 
further  off  the  bull's-eye  than  here,"  said  Mr.  Hamley.  Whereat 
they  both  laughed.  This  was  one  of  the  great  man's  witti- 
cisms :  a  fair  specimen  of  the  kind  of  thing  which  made  him 
king  of  his  company.  "  But  I  did  not  come  here  to  crack  jokes  \ 
I  came  to  talk  business,"  he  said,  breaking  off  suddenly. 

"  And  business  be  it,"  returned  Mr.  Simpson,  grave  on  the 
instant,  and  assuming  his  professional  manner  like  a  mask. 

"  Garth  will  come  here  for  a  mortgage,"  said  Mr.  Hamley, 
checking  off  his  first  proposition  on  his  finger. 

"  Just  so." 

"  You  must  find  the  money."  This  was  the  second,  marked 
off  in  the  same  way. 

Mr.  Simpson  made  two  strokes  on  his  blotting-pad. 

"  And  you  must  lend  it  on  your  own  hand,  and  give  him  rope. 
Give  him  twelve  hundred  if  he  wants  it,  at  five  per  cent.  That 
will  be  a  tidy  lot  ;  and  when  he  has  it,  he's  hooked." 

"  He  is,"  said  Mr.  Simpson. 

tf  And  then  one  of  the  eyesores  of  the  neighbourhood  will 
be  abolished,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  taking  up  his  grand  manner  ; 
"  and  Long  Field  will  be  farmed  as  it  ought  to  be." 

"  Which  will  be  a  public  benefaction,  Mr.  Hamley,"  said  the 
lawyer. 

"  I  think  so  too,  Simpson,  I  think  so  too,"  he  answered  pom- 
pously. "  I  think  I  may  say  I  have  deserved  well  of  Milltown 
for  the  good  I  have  done  the  land.  It  was  weeds  and  rubbish, 
most  of  it,  when  I  found  it — a  set  of  beggarly  bankrupts,  that's 
what  they  were — and  I  have  made  it,  as  one  might  say,  a 
•miling  garden." 


LATE  FOR  LUNCHEON.  195 

"  You  have,  sir ;  and  a  beautiful  simile  it  is." 

"  And  yet  that  pig-headed  brute  would  not  sell !"  said  Mr. 
Hamley  with  his  injured  tone. 

"  Incredible  ! "  returned  the  lawyer  ;  "  most  extraordinary  !  " 

"  You  may  well  say  that,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  "  Meantime 
see  to  the  note  of  hand  when  Garth  calls,  and  give  him  rope." 

"  I  will,  sir ;  rope  enough  to  hang  him,"  said  Mr.  Simpson 
with  an  unpleasant  laugh. 

Mr.  Hamley  frowned,  as  he  had  frowned  before;  this  time 
from  a  benevolent  motive.  "  I  don't  like  such  harsh  expres- 
sions, Simpson,"  he  said  sternly.  "  They  are  unchristian,  and 
not  the  thing." 

"  I  am  sorry  I  offended,  sir,"  Mr.  Simpson  answered  with  a 
contrite  look  "  But  one  is  apt  to  let  one's  feelings  run  away 
with  one,  even  in  office  hours ;  and  a  man  who's  no  frietid  to 
one  who  has  been,  as  I  may  say,  the  making  of  me  and  mine — 
why  I  can't  be  very  soft  on  him,  you  see,  sir." 

"  Yes,  all  that  is  proper  enough,"  Mr.  Hamley  answered  ; 
"  but  don't  let  your  zeal  get  ahead  of  your  discretion,  that's 
all." 

And  the  lawyer  answered,  "  No,  sir,  I  will  not,"  humbly. 

What  good  these  two  men  proposed  to  themselves  by  this 
little  transparent  farce,  it  would  have  been  difficult  for  either 
to  have  explained  ;  but  it  was  the  kind  of  thing  they  kept  up 
together  and  each  assumed  that  he  deceived  the  other. 

"  By-the-by,  Simpson,  hovr  about  the  last  quarter's  interest 
from  Cragfoot  1 "  asked  Mr.  Hamley  suddenly.  "  Paid  yet  1" 

"No,  sir.  Money's  bad  to  get  from  the  Colonel;  grows 
tighter  quarter  by  quarter." 

"  Overdue  how  long ! " 

"  A  week  and  two  days." 

"  Give  him  a  full  fortnight,  and  then w  Mr.  Hamley  in- 
dulged in  a  little  pantomime  expressive  of  turning  a  screw. 

"  I  understand,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Simpson,  with  another  hiero- 
gtyphic  on  the  blotting-pad.  "  A  fortnight's  grace,  and  then 
the  screw  t " 

"  Just  so  ;  not  too  hard  at  first,  you  know.  Gently  does  it, 
but  fast  hold  all  the  same.  You  understand." 

"  All  right,  sir ;  I  kuovr." 

"  Well  then,  I  think  I  have  no  more  to  say  ;  so  good  morn 


196  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO.  LOVE?" 

ing  to  you,"  said  Mr.  llamley,  flinging  a  condescending  nod  to 
his  tool,  who  bowed  as  low  as  if  the  master  of  Abbey  Holme, 
Ledbury's  successful  office-boy,  was  the  Dalai- Lama  in  person, 
and  he  one  of  his  chosen  worshippers.  Then,  mounting  his 
showy  bay,  Mr.  Hamley  cantered  up  the  street,  followed  by  his 
smart  groom  also  on  a  showy  bay,  luncheon  waiting  for  him  at 
home — as  he  knew. 

"  Why  whatever  has  kept  you  all  this  long  time.  Mr.  S. !  ' 
was  Mrs.  Simpson's  querulous  ejaculation  rather  than  question, 
as  her  husband  went  into  the  dingy  little  back  parlour  where 
his  cold  chop  and  flat  beer  awaited  him. 

"That  beast  Hamley!"  was  his  reply.  "I  wish  the  devil 
would  wring  his  neck  for  him  !  " 

"  Law,  Simpson,  how  you  do  talk  ! "  said  his  wife.  "  But  I 
don't  wonder  at  your  being  in  a  wax ;  it  is  rousing  to  be  want- 
ing one's  dinner  and  it  a-spoiling  on  the  hob." 

"  It's  more  rousing  to  have  to  do  that  beast's  dirty  work," 
said  Mr.  Simpson,  fencing  with  his  conscience  in  that  curious 
way  in  which  slaves  and  cowards  compound  for  the  evil  they 
commit  by  throwing  the  shame  of  responsibility  on  the  man 
who  has  bought  them,  and  is  now  driving  them  to  iniquity. 

"  Well,  he  saved  us  when  we  wanted  a  good  turn,"  said  Mrs. 
Simpson,  with  a  wife's  natural,  contradiction  and  aggravating 
gratitude  for  the  benefits  which  gall  her  husband.  "  And  it's 
only  natural  he  should  be  wanting  his  money's  worth  somehow. 
If  you  did  n't 'want  him  on  your  hands,  you  should  have  been 
careful  to  keep  him  off  them." 

"  Don't  be  a  fool,  woman,  and  hold  your  mag  on  things  you 
don't  understand,"  said  Mr.  Simpson  coarsely. 

Whereat  Mrs.  Simpson  tossed  her  head  and  said,  "  Well  I'm 
sure  ! "  in  a  pet  in  which  she  continued  to  the  end  of  the  day ; 
though  it  was  uncomfortable,  because  she  wanted  to  tell  her 
lord  some  Militown  gossip  she  had  just  heard — how  that  those 
heathenish  Fletchers  were  getting  as  thick  as  thieves  with  Miss 
Kemball  up  there  at  the  Abbey,  and  Miss  Biggs  did  say  she 
expected  soon  to  have  an  order,  and  she  supposed  they  would 
do  it  handsome. 

Wiien  James  Garth  went  down  that  night  to  Mr.  Simpson's 
he  found  everything  as  smooth  as  velvet.  The  lawyer  happened 
to  have  just  twelve  hundred  pounds  of  his  own  to  which  he 


LATE  FOR  LUNCHEON.  197 

was  as  welcome  as  the  flowers  of  May  ;  and  he  would  draw  out 
the  note  of  hand  as  he  stood  there.  This  would  pay  oft  all  his 
creditors  at  one  stroke,  and  give  him  a  tidy  little  sum  to  put  into 
the  land  for  better  crops  next  harvest-time.  Twelve  hundred 
pounds !  It  would  set  him  square  he  hoped,  both  now  and  in 
the  future ;  and  he  might  take  his  own  time  to  pay  it  off. 

No,  he  would  not  put  that  into  the  bond,  he  said,  when  Garth, 
with  a  peasant's  natural  acuteness  where  land  is  concerned, 
wanted  it  expressly  stated  under  stamp  and  seal,  that  the  money 
should  not  be  called  in  before  such  a  date,  and  then  not  until 
due  notice  had  been  given.  There  must  be  some  kind  of  trust 
between  man  and  man ;  and  besides,  it  was  not  professional. 
All  he  could  do,  or  would,  was  to  lend  the  money  at  five  per 
cent.,  and  to  promise  verbally,  that  unless  unforeseen  accidents 
should  arise — which  he  did  not  contemplate,  but  for  which  he 
would  not  hold  himself  responsible  should 'they  come — he  would 
not  call  it  in  while  the  interest  was  paid  regularly,  and  the 
I.  0.  U.  looked  safe. 

And  as  need  was  pressing,  and  this  was  the  best  he  could  do, 
James  Garth  took  the  loan  on  these  conditions ;  and  manfully 
set  himself  to  overlay  a  certain  uneasy  sense  of  insecurity  with 
the  rose-coloured  hopefulness  of  his  buoyant  temper. 

As  Mr.  Hamley  was  riding  smartly  homewards,  he  said  to 
himself  again  and  again  what  a  remarkably  easy  thing  it  was 
to  be  successful,  and  how  pleasant  life  was  to  the  man  who 
knew  how  to  make  hay  while  the  sun  shone,  and  to  take  time 
and  Mr.  Simpson  by  the  forelock!  He  had  no  sympathy  with 
all  those  white-livered  dyspeptic  fellows  who  go  about  the 
world  shoes  down  at  heel  and  coats  out  at  elbows,  unsuccess- 
ful and  unhappy.  Look  at  him,  how  he  managed !  Why,  men 
were  so  many  puppets  in  his  hand,  and  he  was  .the  master  who 
pulled  the  strings  and  made  them  dance  to  his  tunes.  There 
was  Colonel  Lowe  now;  he  thought  himself  master  of  Cragfoot, 
did  he  1  Ah,  he  little  knew  that  he  was  no  better  than  a  dog 
in  a  kennel,  and  might  be  turned  out  at  any  moment !  He 
swaggered  and  gave  himself  airs,  did  he  1  Well,  let  him  swag- 
ger. If  he  came  too  near  a  certain  forbidden  subject,  he  would 
simply  have  to  learn  his  master  before  the  week  was  out,  that 
was  all.  If  he  behaved  himself  decently,  and  that  cub  of  his 
married  money,  well,  he  might  drag  on  a  little  longer  in  Crag- 


198  "  vrn.AT  worLn  TOT'  no  LOVE  ? " 

foot  if  he  liked.  It  all  depended  on  his,  the  secret  owner's 
mood,  and  what  he  wanted  to  do  with  the  place  himself.  What 
a  glow  of  satisfaction  that  thought  of  power  gave  him  !  Per- 
haps— he  didn't  know — but  perhaps,  if  Patricia  married  to  his 
liking,  he  might  give  her  the  Colonel's  house  as  her  portion. 
It  would  not  be  unpleasant  to  his  pride  to  have  the  world  say 
how  generously  he  had  dowered  his  wife's  niece  ;  and  it  would 
not  be  unpleasant  to  revenge  himself  on  the  Colonel  for  certain 
well-remembered  insolences  of  bygone  times,  when  the  smart 
young  owner  of  Cragfoot  had  cracked  his  whip  over  the  ragged 
lad  loitering  at  Ledbury's  door,  and  treated  him  as  he  would  be 
treated  in  his  turn  one  of  these  fine  days,  if  there  was  justice 
on  earth  or  in  heaven  ! 

Whenever  Mr.  Hamley  spoke  openly  to  men  of  his  former 
life,  he  spoke  of  it  with  the  courageous  confession  of  a  wise  and 
brave  man.  Whenever  he  thought  of  it,  lie  lost  his  inner  self- 
mastery.  Those  who  had  befriended  him  and  those  who  had 
insulted  him,  were  equally  in  his  Index  of  the  future,  and 
equally  to  be  punished.  Colonel  Lowe  was  of  the  latter  ;  James 
Garth  of  the  former ;  and  both  had  to  bear  the  weight  of  his 
hand  now  that  this  hand  had  power.  He  had  them.  He  had 
got  both  the  big  fish  and  the  little  one  in  his  net,  and  he  felt  as 
a  good  man  feels  who  has  fulfilled  his  life's  highest  intention. 
It  was  odd  how  he  had  coveted  that  Long  Field  Farm!  The  want 
of  it  had  soured  all  the  sweets  of  his  other  possessions ;  but 
now — he  drew  a  deep  breath  as  he  mounted  the  hill  whence  he 
could  see  Abbey  Holme  lying  fair  and  stately  amid  its  magnifi- 
cent oaks  and  beeches,  and  his  eyes  wandered  far  over  his  own 
estate — with  the  smoking  chimney  of  Long  Field  to  be  soon 
added  to  the  rest. 

But  as  he  drew  nearer  to  his  own  home,  the  image  of  what 
was  waiting  for  him  there  became  more  and  more  distinct,  and 
the  effect  sobering  in  proportion.  He  pictured  to  himself  the 
expression  on  Mrs.  Hamley's  face  :  he  knew  it  so  well ! — and 
the  form  of  the  punishment  waiting  for  him  became  photogra- 
phically distinct.  He  knew  her  way ;  it  was  stereotyped.  She 
would  remain  immovable  in  the  drawing-room  after  luncheon 
was  announced  ;  her  ladylike  work  of  many  colours  folded  up 
and  laid  aside ;  her  pale  eyes  fixed  on  the  clock  ;  waiting  with 
crisped  lips  and  voiceless  forbearance  until  the  truant  should 


LATE  FOR  LUNCHEON.  "199 

make  his  appearance.  Over  and  over  again  lie  had  besought 
her  to  give  him  just  five  minutes'  law  when  he  happened  to  be 
late ;  which  was  seldom ;  and  then  to  lunch  without  him.  And 
over  and  over  again  his  wife  had  assured  him,  with  the,  tart 
submission  of  a  deferential  code  grafted  on  to  an  aggressive 
character,  which  was  her  way,  that  she  should  never  dream  of 
failing  so  far  in  her  duty  to  him.  If  he  chose  to  forget  what 
was  due  to  her,  she  used  to  say  with  the  severe  patience,  the 
antagonistic  humility  under  which  he  had  so  often  writhed, 
she  was  not  justified  in  following  his  example.  He  was  the 
master  if  she  was  the  lady ;  and  the  master  must  be  attended 
to  first  of  all  things.  It  might  not  be  good  manners  to  keep  her 
waiting;  but  husbands  did  not  always  trouble  themselves  about 
manners  in  their  own  homes. 

He  knew  by  heart  the  air  with  which  she  would  take  his 
arm  the  instant  he  went  in,  and  walk  solemnly  t6  the  dining- 
room,  compressed  and  grim  if  her  mood  was  confessedly  war- 
like, or  pathetically  patient  if  she  was  in  the  humour  to  stab 
through  wool ;  as  sometimes  happened  in  her  more  subtle  days. 
He  knew  how  they  would  sit  down  in  funereal  silence  to  their 
sumptuous  meal,  with  all  the  made  dishes  cold — and  they  could 
BO  easily  have  been  kept  hot !  he  thought  with  a  prophetic 
pang ;  for  Mr.  Hamley  liked  good  living — with  the  servants, 
who  had  been  kept  hanging  about  in  expectant  state,  cross 
and  hungry,  and  civilly  showing  the  worst  side  of  everything, 
as  servants  can,  all  in  the  way  of  duty  and  their  lawful  service. 
He  knew  how  the  disturbed  arrangements  of  the  afternoon 
would  be  flung  at  him  in  a  disordered  heap,  and  the  whole  day 
with  some  subsequent  ones  thrown  out  of  gear,  all  for  that 
lost  half-hour.  He  already  heard  the  meekly-injured  tone  in 
which  she  would  refuse  everything  offered  to  her  :  "  I  cannot 
eat  that,  John,  It  is  spoilt  with  waiting  ;"  the  elaborate  sym- 
pathy with  which  she  would  apologize  to  Dora  and  Patricia  for 
the  uncomfortable  state  of  the  table  ;  and,  without  a  word  of 
direct  reproach,  how  she  would  heap  burning  coals  on  his 
recreant  head,  accepting  his  excuses  with  a  frosty  smile  and  a 
stiff  inclination  of  her  well-abtired  body,  her  eyes  saying  as 
plainly  as  words,  "  I  know  that  you  are  telling  falsehoods,  but 
you  are  the  master  and  I  am  the  slave,  and  I  must  set  an  ex- 
ample of  wifely  submission  to  the  girls."  For  unpunctuality  at 


200  "WHAT  "WOULD  TOP  DO,  LOVE?" 

meals  was  one  of  the  cardinal  vices  at  Abbey  Holme,  where  it 
was  held  as  an  undoubted  article  of  faith  that  life  had  been 
given  to  man  for  the  careful  codification  of  conventionalities, 
and  not  that  conventionalities  had  been  created  for  the  better 
regulation  of  life. 

Visions  such  as  these,  with  dear  Dora's  pretty  face  and  dove- 
like  eyes  as  his  sunshine  in  the  cloudy  sky,  her  tacit  but  elo- 
quent amiability,  desirous  to  please  both  and  careful  to  hurt 
neither,  flanked  by  glimpses  of  Patricia's  directer  endeavours 
to  show  him  that  she  at  least  was  sorry  for  his  discomfiture  ; 
which  only  made  her  aunt  angry  with  her  and  more  disagreeable 
to  himself — "  the  girl  has  a  good  heart,  but  she  is  deuced  up- 
setting in  a  house,  and  as  vulgar  as  you  please  ! "  was  his 
unspoken  commentary  on  her  honest  sympathy — held  the  man's 
pride  a  trifle  low  in  the  direction  of  home,  to  balance  the 
hunter's  joy  in  having  trapped  his  game  so  securely  that  when- 
ever he  chose  to  snap  the  lid  he  would  hold  his  prize  in  his 
hand,  to  deal  with  as  seemed  good  to  him. 

And  this  last  thought  brought  him  to  the  Abbey  Holme 
door — with  Mrs.  Hainley  waiting  on  the  other  side  of  it. 


PAY1.NG  VISITS.  201 


CHAPTER  XIX 

PAYING  VISITS. 

RS.  HAMLEY  was  a  regal  k5nd  of  woman  in  her  way, 
and  like  other  royalties  had  a  profound  objection  to 
ail  derangement  of  plans.  She  had  appointed  the 
carriage  to  be  at  the  door  at  a  certain  moment,  and  her  calcu- 
lations founded  thereon  had  been  made  with  the  exactness  of  a 
Chinese  puzzle.  As  it  was,  everything  was  displaced.  And 
this  was  an  unpardonable  offence.  The  days  were  short,  and 
the  visits  which  she  had  arranged  to  pay  suddenly  became  of 
paramount  importance  ;  after  having  been  delayed  for  weeks 
innocuously,  entailing  no  end  of  social  misdemeanours  now  by 
being  carried  over  into  another  day.  There  is  no  need  to  say 
that  for  the  last  hour  life  at  Abbey  Holme  had  not  been  joy- 
ous, and  that  the  burden  of  human  miseries  had  been  heavy. 

"  Very  sorry,  Lady,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  coming  out  from  his 
dressing  flushed  and  flustered.  Mrs.  Hamley  would  not  have 
sat  down  with  him  had  he  not  been  dressed — as  he  called  it, 
"  to  the  nines,"  but  she,  "  as  a  gentleman." 

"  Your  arm,  Mr.  Hamley,"  was  the  lady's  curt  response. 

"  I  have  been  detained  by  business  of  the  most  important 
kind,  else  I  would  not  have  delayed  you."  he  continued,  still 
flustered,  and  louder  than  usual,  more  parabolic  too  than 
usual  in  consequence. 

"  Shall  we  sit  down  while  you  explain  your  affairs,  Mr. 
Hamley,  or  shall  we  go  into  luncheon,  which  has  been  waiting 
a  full  hour  1 "  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  withdrawing  her  hand  from 
his  own  and  looking  at  him  sternly. 

Mr.  Hamley  laughed  uneasily  as  he  picked  up  the  lean  long 
fingers  and  laid  them  on  his  coat  sleeve  ;  glanced  at  dear  Dora 
—locking  discreetly  another  way,  and  at  Patricia — looking  in 
pained  reprobation  at  her  aunt ;  and  then  walked  off  in  silence 
to  the  dining-room,  conscious  that  the  time  for  propitiation  had 
not  arrived.  And  as  they  went,  Patricia  behind-backs  took  up 


202  "WHAT  WOt'LD  YOU  DO.  I.OVE?" 

dear  Dora  bodily  by  the  waist,  and  carried  her  for  a  few  steps 
with  dreadfully  rude  ease,  as  her  form  of  protest  against  the 
dead  dulness  of  the  last  hour  and  the  sourness  of  the  present 
moment.  Had  Mrs.  Hamley  looked  round  things,  would  not 
have  been  harmonious  for  Patricia  for  the  next  day  or  two. 

Her  iniquity,  however,  passed  off  without  detection  ;  and  as 
Dora  did  not  laugh  or  scream,  being  too  angry  with  the  girl 
for  the  one  part  and  too  frightened  of  her  sure  share  of  *\irs. 
Hamley's  wrath  should  they  be  discovered  for  the  other,  and 
as,  moreover,  deep  indignation  at  Mr.  Hamley's  domestic  sin 
of  unpunctuality  had  exercised  so  many  of  Mrs.  Hamley's 
faculties  as  to  leave  her  none  for  suspicion,  she  noted  nothing 
of  the  little  flutter  that  went  on  in  the  hall  as  that  incorrigible 
niece  of  hers  affronted  the  genus  loci  once  again  as  so  many 
times  before,  and  scared  the  lares  and  penates  as  a  kitten  might 
scare  a  cage  full  of  white  mice. 

After  an  uncomfortable  meal  during  which  the  carriage  came 
round — an  additional  log  to  the  fire  of  Mrs.  Hamley's  anger — 
they  all  set  off  to  pafy  visits.  This,  too,  was  one  of  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley's  regal  ways.  She  liked  to  do  things  in  a  certain  cumbrous 
state,  and  to  be  attended  when  she  went  out.  It  was  a  rare 
mark  of  social  familiarity  when  she  went  with  Dora  alone  to 
any  house.  As  a  rule  she  exacted  Mr.  Hamley's  company  as 
the  marital  Goldstick  whose  duty  it  was -to  accompany  her; 
and  Patricia  was  now  also  part  of  her  personal  court. 

To-day  she  especially  desired  to  have  all  things  decently  and 
with  more  than  ordinary  pomp  and  propriety.  She  was  going 
to  Cragfoot  and  the  Rectory  ;  and  more,  she  was  going  for  the 
first  time  to  the  Quest  where  the  flag  was  flying — the  family 
having  come  down.  And  Lord  Merrian  was  a  personable 
young  man  who  might — who  knows  t — thought  Mrs.  Hamley 
with  a  critical  look  at  the  two  young  ladies  who  sat,  discreet 
and  demure,  facing  her. 

They  were  pretty  girls,  each  in  her  own  way ;  and  she  would 
not  grudge  the  prize  to  one  for  the  sake  of  the  other.  F<  >r  if 
Dora  won  it — well,  dear  Dora  was  her  own  creation,  as  well  as 
her  personal  favourite,  and  she  could  say  with  pride  :  "  Look 
at  the  result  of  my  training  !  a  coronet  as  the  reward  of  learn- 
ing lady-like  deportment  and  self -suppression  at  my  hands '  " 
And  if  Patricia  won  it — Patricia  was  of  her  own  blood,  and  she 


PAYING  VISITS.  203 

could  glorify  herself  in  "  My  niece,  Lady  Merrian,"  or,  please 
heaven  to  take  the  dear  Earl  from  a  sinful  world  to  glory, 
"  My  niece,  Lady  Dovedale."  Stronger  brains  than  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley's  have  woven  as  solid-looking  romances  out  of  as  slight 
materials,  and  have  been  quite  as  sure  of  success — if  only  other 
people  had  not  fingered  the  threads  and  broken  in  upon  the 
pattern. 

By  way  of  parenthesis,  it  may  be  observed  here  that,  because 
Mrs.  Hamley  elected  to  be  accompanied  by  her  husband  when 
she  was  out  doing  her  royalties,  she  was  by  no  means  blind  to 
his  deficiencies  in  the  art  of  manner  and  the  science  of  good 
breeding.  Indeed,  no  one  saw  so  clearly  as  she  did  when  and 
where  he  failed  ;  no  one  knew  so  well  the  thinness  of  the 
veneer  with  which  she  had  laboured  so  hard  to  conceal  the  in- 
herent coarseness  of  the  original  material.  But  Mrs.  Hamley 
was  a  clever  social  reasoner.  She  knew  that  courage  and  con- 
stancy are  the  only  methods  by  which  a  conventional  misde 
meanour  can  be  rendered  respectable;  and  that  when  you  have 
made  an  unfitting  marriage  say,  the  only  thing  to  do  is  to  carry 
your  conjugal  flag  bravely  to  the  front,  and  appear  profoundly 
ignorant  of  rents  and  rags.  To  try  to  merge  her  marriage  in 
her  own  personality  was  a  mistake  Mrs.  Hamley  was  far  too 
acute  to  commit.  Sl)£  had  sold  herself  for  a  consideration,  and 
she  had  so  much  more  honour  than  usually  belongs  to  women 
who  marry  for  money,  that  she  loyally  performed  her  part,  and 
never  flinched  from  the  obligations  it  entailed.  Her  husband 
was  a  coarse,  showy  snob ;  she  knew  that  well  enough,  and  she 
knew  the  world  knew  it ;  but  the  unwritten  convention  be- 
tween them  had  been  her  social  countenance  and  wifely  loyalty 
in  return  for  his  money  and  conjugal  respect ;  and  the  bond 
had  been  faithfully  kept.  All  the  world  believed  that  she  did 
really  love  her  black  haired,  florid,  big-fisted  Plutus,  who  was 
not  a  gentleman  for  all  his  acres ;  and  that  he  in  his  turn  loved 
his  faded,  elderly,  ultra-refined  wife  :  and  the  belief  counted  as 
a  medal  of  gold  and  a  chain  of  silver  in  their  honour.  If  they 
had  quarrelled  in  public,  or  in  any  way  allowed  men  to  see  that 
they  confessed  to  a  mistake,  they  would  have  been  cut.  As  it 
was,  union  gave  strength,  and  the  success  of  the  marriage  com- 
manded respect. 

Consequently,  when  Mrs.  Hamley  went  in  state  to-day  to  the 


204  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

Quest,  which  represented  Windsor  Castle  to  the  Milltown 
world,  she  went  with  this  marital  Goldstick  of  hers  by  her  side. 
And  though  it  was  a  trial  that  took  all  her  force  to  bear  with 
dignity,  it  was  one  which  she  was  conscious  had  certain  solid 
favourable  issues  not  to  be  despised,  and  which  must  therefore 
be  borne  bravely. 

The  first  place  at  which  the  handsome  ponderous  carriage 
stopped  was  Oagfoot.  They  found  Mrs.  Lowe  at  home,  plain- 
tive and  taciturn  as  ever ;  tumbled  as  to  her  attire  ;  dishevelled 
about  the  head  ;  wrapped  in  a  rhubarb-coloured  shawl,  and  af- 
flicted with  her  eternal  catarrh  ;  taking  mournful  views  of  life 
generally,  and  specially  of  all  that  pertained  to  that  particular 
day.  She  was  a  weak-spirited  lady  at  all  times,  like  some 
middle-aged  Niobe,  the  spiritual  mother  of  tears  and  the  heiress 
of  undesignated  woe. 

Miserable  always,  Mrs.  Lowe  would  have  been  hard  put  to 
it  had  she  been  obliged  to  crystallize  her  sorrows  into  a  definite 
shape.  Everything  afflicted  her  ;  from  the  decadence  of  P'ng- 
land  to  the  flighty  manners  of  the  maids  ;  from  the  horrible 
atmosphere  of  Milltown — of  Milltown  specially,  more  horrible 
there  than  anywhere  else  in  England  — to  the  high  edge  round 
one  neighbour's  garden  and  the  low  wall  round  another's.  She 
hated  the  country  and  she  loved  London.  Once  when,  for  his  own 
purposes,  the  Colonel  had  let  Cragfoot  for  a  year  and  had  lived  in 
London,  she  had  wept  all  the  day  and  bemoaned  herself  all 
the  night  for  hatred  of  Bland  ford  Square  and  desire  to  be  again 
at  Cragfoot.  When  Sydney  was  born  she  refused  to  be  com- 
forted because  he  was  a  boy  and  not  a  girl ;  had  he  been  a  girl 
she  would  have  held  herself  accursed  in  that  nature  had  denied 
her  a  man-child.  Whatever  was  was  wrong  with  poor  Mrs.  Lowe, 
the  root  and  heart  of  whose  misfortune  was — her  husband, 
grafted  on  to  a  chronic  disturbance  of  her  digestion,  and  en- 
ergies reduced  thereby  to  zero. 

While  they  were  sitting  with  her,  Patricia  wondering  why 
she  was  so  melancholy  yet  pitying  her  so  much — and  Dora  with 
her  smiles,  her  downcast  eyes  and  air  of  lovely  amiability,  doing 
all  she  knew  to  charm  Sydney's  mother  ;  and  not  succeeding— 
Mrs.  Lowe  being  sharper  than  she  looked — the  door  opened, 
and  the  Colonel  and  his  son  walked  in. 

The  former  was  debonair,  handsome,  haggard,  insolent  as 


PAYING  VISITS.  205 

usual ;  the  gentleman's  insolence,  united  with  a  perfect  manner, 
a  pure  accent,  and  a  charming  voice  :  the  latter  pale,  with  that 
look  of  evil  resolution  about  his  thin  lips  and  the  fire  in  his 
dark  eyes  which  those  who  knew  had  learnt  to  dread.  He  had 
mach  up  his  mind  what  to  do,  and  he  came  prepared  to  act  out 
his  resolve. 

Scarcely  greeting  the  rest  of  the  company,  he  made  his  way- 
straight  to  Dora  sitting  on  the  ottoman,  throwing  flies  ot  fasci- 
nation for  Mrs.  Lowe,  and  shook  hands  with  her  in  a  familiar, 
half-tender,  half-defying  manner,  which  went  like  an  electric 
shock  through  the  room.  Mrs.  Hamley  saw  it  and  Mr.  Ham- 
ley  saw  it ;  the  Lowes  saw  it ;  .arid  even  Patricia's  unsuspicious 
nature  was  enlightened  with  the  rest.  Each  made  his  or 
her  comment  on  what  she  or  he  saw,  and  all  looked  at  Dora,  to 
see  how  she  would  bear  herself,  and  whether  she  would  repel 
or  encourage  such  an  audacious  advance. 

She  blushed  for  her  first  reply,  and  her  eyes  dropped  for 
her  second.  She  was  frightened,  not  pleased  ;  and  wished  that 
Sydney  had  not  shown  his  hand  so  clearly,  nor  drawn  her  into 
the  fray.  She  would  have  infinitely  preferred  that  he  should 
have  gone  into  the  battle  alone — for  there  was  a  battle  to  be 
fought,  and  a  hard  one — and  have  only  called  her  in  to  share 
the  victory  when  he  had  won  it.  But  the  ordeal  had  to  be 
passed  ;  and  it  behoved  her  to  be  careful  of  her  way  among  the 
ploughshares.  One  false  step^  and  the  whole  thing  would  be 
over  for  her !  And  the  first  step  she  made  was  to  answer  the 
young  man's  daring  address  with  her  own  dexterous  power  of 
conciliation  ;  not  angering  him  by  her  coldness  nor  the  others 
by  her  warmth,  but  just  accepting  quietly  what  she  could  not 
disclaim,  and  making  herself  a  party  to  no  policy  but  the  policy 
of  peace.  She  was  set  between  opposing  fires,  and  she  dodged 
gracefully. 

"  What  a  clever  little  baggage !"  said  the  Colonel  to  himself  as 
he  read  her  with  an  accuracy  of  observation  to  be  got  only  from 
a  certain  class  of  men  who  have  studied  in  a  certain  school  of 
women.  "  For  all  her  softness  that  girl  has  the  go  of  the  devil 
in  her !  And  this  thing — what  is  she  like  1 " 

He  turned  his  handsome,  haggard  face  to  the  fresh  and  inno- 
cent one  framed  in  its  loose  waves  of  brown  hair  watching 


208  "  WHAT  WOULD  y  ou  DO,  LOVE ? - 

Dora  anxiously ;  and  from  that  moment  the  two  girls  were 
stereotyped  in  his  mind  as  Brinvilliers  and  Joan  of  Arc. 

The  Cragfoot  drawing-room  opened  into  a  conservatory. 

"  Have  you  seen  our  ferns  ?  "  Sydney  asked  abruptly,  speak- 
ing to  Dora  without  prefex  or  annex. 

"  No,"  answered  Dora,  with  the  sweetest  air  of  modest  un- 
consciousness. 

This  was  another  ploughshare  dexterously  avoided  by  the 
clever  little  feet,  which  understood  wary  walking. 

"  Come  with  me  ;  I  want  to  show  you  my  maidenhair,"  said 
Sydney,  looking  full  at  the  sunny  little  fringe  meandering  ten- 
dril-like about  her  temples. 

The  anonymity  of  his  address  was  not  lost  on  his  hearers  ; 
and  Mr.  Hamley's  face  was  a  study  that  had  its  lessons  for 
those  who  cared  to  read. 

"  We  have  a  great  beauty  at  home,"  said  Dora  simply. 

Sydney  laughed,  "  I  know  that,"  he  sajd,  still  looking  at  her 
feathery  curls ;  "  but  I  will  back  mine  against  any  other  person's 
Come  and  see  it." 

He  stood  up  and  offered  her  his  hand,  and  for  politeness  she 
could  not  refuse  her  own. 

With  a  well-managed  look  of  appeal  to  Mrs.  Hamley,  taking 
in  Mrs.  Hamley's  husband  by  the  way,  she  laid  her  dainty  little 
close-gloved  hand  in  his  as  she  slowly  rose  from  her  seat.  He 
drew  it  within  his  arm,  and  carried  her  off  to  the  conservatory  ; 
speaking  to  her  in  a  low  voice  and  bending  his  face  near  to  hers, 
as  they  walked  across  the  room  in  this  rather  unusual  fashion 
of. going  for  two  young  people  in  an  ordinary  drawing-room 
filled  with  ordinary  gentlemen  and  ladies.  It  was  all  done, 
however,  more  defiantly  than  tenderly — a  challenge  rather  than 
a  caress. 

"  Oh,  do  be  careful,  Syd  1 "  said  Dora  in  a  frightened 
wliisper  over  the  maidenhair. 

"  No,  Dora,  I  will  not.  I  am  going  to  bring  things  to  a 
head,"  said  Sydney.  "  I  swear  this  shall  not  go  on  any  longer. 
It  shall  be  one  thing  or  the  other." 

He  spoke  fiercely,  like  a  flame  of  fire  translated  into  words. 

"  It  is  one  thing  already,  dear,"  said  Dora  with  one  of  her 
most  enchanting  looks. 


LAYING  Visits.  207 

"  If  you  look  like  that  you  will  drive  me  wild  !  You  know 
I  cannot  stand  those  eyes  of  yours,  Dora  ! "  cried  Sydney. 

"  You  silly  boy  !  "  lisped  Dora,  casting  down  her  eyes  and 
looking  up  from  under  her  brows  with  the  prettiest,  most  co- 
quettish modesty.  "  I  will  not  look  at  you  at  all  then  !  Will 
that  be  right  ? " 

"  No,  Dody ;  I  should  go  mad  then,"  said  Sydney,  with  his 
hand  on  hers. 

"  Poor  thing ! — you  are  in  a  bad  way !  "  she  laughed.  "  Why, 
what  will  please  you  ? " 

"  Not  your  ridicule,  Dora  1  "  he  answered  savagely. 

He  had  a  tindery  kind  of  temper,  whereon  sparks  were  never 
wanting  ;  the  irritable  temper  of  a  selfish  man  who  holds  that 
the  world  and  all  within  it  were  created  for  his  pleasure,  and 
who  refuses  to  take  his  share  of  any  of  the  disagreeables  that 
may  be  afloat. 

"  Play  is  not  ridicule,  dear,"  said  Dora  gently.  "  You  ought 
to  know  by  now,  Syd,  that  I  would  do  nothing  in  the  world  to 
vex  you." 

But  though  she  spoke  with  such  delicious  patience,  in  her 
own  mind  surged  up  the  same  contemptuous  feeling  that  she 
had  for  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hamley  when  she  obeyed,  soothed,  and 
tricked  them.  To  her,  inwardly  so  strong,  outwardly  so  yield- 
ing, the  men  and  women  whom  she  managed  were  little  better 
than  children  whom  she  deceived  for  their  own  good,  while 
allowing  them  to  consider  themselves  supreme. 

"And  nothing  to  please  me,"  Sydney  answered,  his  face 
darkening.  "  Temporize,  temporize,  wait,  do  nothing ;  that  is 
your  policy,  Dora,  and  1  am  sick  of  it ! " 

"  You  will  ruin  us  both  if  you  do  not  follow  it,"  said  Dora 
earnestly.  "  Cannot  you  see,  Syd,  that  we  must  have  your 
father's  consent  before  we  can  make  a  move?  What  would 
become  of  us  if  he  refused  as  well  as  Mr.  Hamley?  I  know 
that  Mr.  Hamley  will  refuse ;  but  if  Colonel  Lowe  consents  we 
are  independent." 

"  And  why  the  devil  should  Mr.  Hamley  refuse  1 "  cried  Syd- 
ney in  a  rage. 

Dora  looked  meek.  "  I  am  sure  I  don't  know,  she  said ; 
"  unless  he  does  not  like  parting  with  his  money." 

"  Well,  Dora,  whatever  happens  I  have  made  up  my  mind. 


208  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

I  will  speak  to  my  father  to-night  and  to  Mr.  Hamley  to- 
morrow." 

"Not  to  Mr.  Hamley  unless  your  father  consents,"  she 
pleaded.  "  We  shall  be  no  nearer  if  you  do — only  farther  off 
than  before." 

"Then  what  do  you  propose,  Dora?"  asked  Sydney  inso- 
lently. 

"  Patience,  dear,"  said  Dora,  raising  her  pretty  eyes.  "  Pa- 
tience and  enough  to  eat ;  not  impatience  and  starvation." 

"If  you  two  young  people  have  concluded  with  examining 
the  flowers  we  will  proceed,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  behind  them. 

He  spoke  in  his  finest  accent  and  with  his  deepest  voice  ;  and 
Dora  started  as  if  a  salvo  of  artillery  had  thundered  over  her 
head.  They  had  not  heard  him  come.  He  had  taken  good 
care  they  should  not. 

"  We  have  quite  done,"  she  said,  looking  at  him  shyly. 
"  Mr.  Lowe  was  only  showing  me  his  ferns.  Is  it  not  a  beauty, 
Mr.  Hamley?"  she  continued,  passing  her  fingers  across  a  mis- 
erable little  specimen  which  even  Mr.  Hamley,  who  knew 
nothing  about  flowers  or  ferns,  could  see  was  not  worth  the  pot 
in  which  it  grew. 

"  If  that  is  what  you  have  been  admiring  I  can't  say  much 
for  your  taste.  It  seems  to  me  a  heap  of  time  wasted  in  look- 
ing at  them  weeds  !"  he  said  coarsely,  passion. warring  against 
grammar,  and  grammar  getting  the  worst  of  it ;  as  it  always 
did  when  he  was  excited. 

"  You  cannot  wonder  at  any  one's  forgetting  how  time  goes 
in  Miss  Drumraond's  presence,"  said  Sydney,  gallantly  as  to 
manner,  insolently  as  to  intention,  so  far  as  Mr.  Hamley  was 
concerned. 

Though  it  was  a  matter  of  vital  importance  to  him  as  things 
stood  to  keep  fair  with  Mr.  Hamley,  even  to  make  him  his 
friend  if  possible,  he  would  not  control  himself  to  courtesy 
when  the  fit  took  him  to  be  aggressive.  And  as  the  fit  was  on 
him  now  he  indulged  it.  He  hated  Mr.  Hamley,  and  he  did 
not  care  to  conceal  it.  He  hated  him  partly  because  of  his  bad 
manners  and  his  large  means,  but  chiefly  because  Dora  Drum- 
mond  lived  in  his  house — and  he  had  power  over  her. 

"Excuse  me,"  said  the  master  of  Abbey  Holme  and  Mr. 
Simpson's  invisible  client  Joues,  who  had  lent  the  money  for 


PAYING  VISITS.  209 

which  Cragfoot  was  mortgaged;  "but  if  there  is  one  thing 
more  than  another  I  think  no  gentleman  should  do,  it  is  pass- 
ing compliments  on  ladies  when  they  are  under  another  gen- 
tleman's protection." 

"  I  was  not  aware  that  Miss  Drummond  was  under  any  gen- 
tleman's protection — more  than  my  own  at  this  moment,"  said- 
Sydney,  looking  at  him  straight  in  the  eyes. 

"  Then  I  do,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  taking  Dora's  hand  and  pull- 
ing it  roughly  through  his  arm.  "/am  this  young  lady's  pro- 
tector, sir,  and  I  wish  the  world  to  know  as  much." 

"Miss  Drummond  must  decide  for  herself,"  said  Sydney, 
tossing  up  his  curly  he'ad  with  an  insolent  laugh,  "  Which  is 
it,  Dora  ? " 

" '  Which  is  it ' — what  ? "  cried  Mr.  Hamley  with  a  fierce 
scowl.  "  Can  I  believe  my  ears  1 " 

"  That  is  just  what  Midas  said,"  sneered  Sydney. 

Mr.  Hamley  let  fall  a  thundering  oath.  "  Is  it  come  to  this 
— '  Dora,'  to  you  t "  he  said  furiously.  "  Let  me  know  what  it 
all  means,  or  by " 

"  I  am  sure  Mr.  Lowe  will  apologize  for  his  mistake  ;  for  he 
is  not  in  the  habit  of  calling  me  Dora  ; "  said  Dora,  hurriedly 
interrupting  the  objurgation  on  its  path.  "  I  do  not  think  you 
meant  to  offend  either  Mr.  Hamley  or  myself,  Mr.  Lowe,"  she 
continued  in  her  peace-making  way,  looking  at  Sydney  and 
smiling  at  Mr.  Hamley,  whose  arm  she  pressed  tenderly  and 
daintily.  But  she  was  treading  heavily  on  the  younger  man's 
foot  all  the  while  ;  and  Sydney  understood  pantomime. 

"  I  certainly  did  not  mean  to  offend  you,  Miss  Drummond," 
he  said  half  sullenly,  half  familiarly. 

"  Nor,  Mr.  Hamley,"  put  in  Dora.  And  there  was  another 
grind  of  the  small  high-heeled  boot.  "  Mr.  Hamley  has  been 
like  my  father  all  my  life,  and  I  owe  him  the  love  and  obedience 
of  a  daughter."  She  looked  prettily  into  his  coarse,  flushed 
face. 

"  Daughter  be  hanged  1 "  said  Mr.  Hamley.  "  I  hate  rub- 
bish, Dora,  and  you  know  it  ! " 

"  You  surely  do  not  mean  to  say  that  you  regard  Miss 
Drummoud  in  any  other  light  but  that  of  a  daughter  ! "  flashed 
out  Sydney. 

"  Mr.  Lowe,  sir,  take  my  advice,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  measur- 

N 


210  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU   DO,  LOVE?" 

ing  him  with  his  eyes  from  head  to  foot,  and  mentally  wring- 
ing his  neck  as  he  would  have  wrung  any  young  cockerell's 
in  his  farm-yard :  "  take  stock  of  your  own  goods  and  chat- 
tels, and  leave  another  man's  alone." 

Sydney's  face  and  eyes  flamed.  "  I  suppose  you  know  the 
only  interpretation  to  that?  "  he  said.  "  As  Miss  Drummond 
is  not  your  wife,  if  she  is  your  'chattel ' " 

"  What  she  is  to  me  has  nothing  to  do  with  you,"  interrupt- 
ed Mr.  Hamley.  "  Keep  to  your  own  side  of  the  way,  Mr. 
Lowe,  and  I'll  keep  to  mine.  There'll  be  mischief  between 
us  else,  and  I  flatter  myself  I  am  a  trifle  the  heavier  metal !  " 

An  imploring  look  from  Dora  checked  the  angry  reply  that 
rose  to  Sydney's  lips.  She  liked  it  well  enough  that  the  two 
men  should  hate  each  other,  and  be  held  back  from  flying  at 
each  othei''s  throats  only  by  the  force  of  conventionality,  for 
her  sake.  She  was  of  the  order  of  woman  to  whom,  though 
not  personally  cruel — quite  the  reverse — men  fighting  for  her 
smiles  was  supreme  honour  and  enjoyment.  What  they  suf- 
fered in  the  conflict  troubled  her  no  more  than  it  troubles  the 
lioness \vho  crouches,  licking  her  lips  and  purring,  waiting  for 
the  bleeding  victor,  whether  it  is  the  blrxk  lion  or  the  tawny 
that  lies  dead  under  the  forest  trees.  But  too  much  was  involv- 
ed at  this  moment  in  the  keeping  of  peace  to  allow  her  to  pos- 
turise  as  a  prize  for  which  men  did  well  to  contend ;  so  literal- 
ly as  well  as  morally  she  brought  pressure  to  bear  on  Sydney, 
and  being  the  wiser  and  the  stronger,  she  conquered.  He 
ground  his  teeth  together,  but  he  kept  the  torrent  of  words 
within  them;  and  making  that  peculiar  grimace  which  goes 
by  the  name  of  a  "  sardonic  grin,"  he  turned  to  Dora,  and 
said  aloud  in  French,  ".Ce  soir,  cherie?"  as  compensation. 

"What's  that?"  cried  Mr.  Hamley  angrily,  "Who's 
a-talking  foreign  tongues  here  ? " 

Sydney  laughed  unpleasantly.  His  laugh  was  naturally 
unpleasant. 

"French,"  said  Dora  with  her  tender  smile.  "  Soit!" 
with  a  look  at  Sydney ;  "  it  only  means  *  so  be  it.'  "  - 

"I  think  itdeucedly  ungentlemanly  to  talk  your  foreign  lin- 
go in  society,"  Mr.  Hamley  answered,  frowning.  "Nowadays 
gentlemen  do  rum  things,  and  where  you'd  look  for  manners 
most  you  find  least.  Now,  Dora,  come!  We  can't  be  here 


PAYING  VISITS.  211 

all  day,  and  it's  my  belief  we've  been  here  too  long  already." 

"  Stit,"  repeated  Sydney,  taking  the  hint. 

Spreading  out  both  his  hands,  with  two  fingers  bent  inward, 
he  made  a  meaningless  pull  at  his  coat. 

Dora's  hat  needed  adjusting.  She  put  up  her  hand  and 
pushed  in  a  hair-pin  with  her  fore-finger.  And  the  engagement 
stood  for  one  o'clock  that  night ;  a  meeting  between  them — 
where  and  how  ? 

Then  they  all  took  their  leave  ;  and  when  they  were  gone 
the  Colonel  said,  but  not  unkindly ;  "  Syd,  my  boy,  come  with 
me  to  the  library.  We  must  have  some  serious  talk,  you 
and  L" 


212  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


OHAPTfilt  XX' 

EXPLANATIONS. 

HUT  the  door  and  sit  down ;  and  now  tell  me — what 
does  all  this  mean  ] "  began  the  Colonel. 

"  What  does  all  what  mean,  sir?  "  answered  Sydney 
evasively. 

"  Don't  fence  with  me,  Syd.  We  both  understand  each 
other  so  far.  But  what  I  do  not  understand  is,  your  ultimate 
meaning — what  you  wish  and  what  you  intend." 

"  You  are  speaking  in  riddles  this  afternoon.  If  you  will 
come  to  the  point,  I  will  meet  you,"  said  Sydney. 

His  father  smiled.  "  You  would  have  made  a  first-rate  diplo- 
matist," he  said. 

n  I  wish  to  heaven  you  had  put  me  into  the  service,  or  done 
anything  for  me  but  keep  me  knocking  about  at  home  1  "  cried 
Sydney  impatiently. 

"  You  are  ungrateful,"  was  the  Colo'nel's  cool  response. 
"  Your  idleness  is  your  own  doing,  not  mine.  If  parents  are 
to  be  blamed  for  all  the  wrongheadedness  of  their  sons,  their 
score  will  be  a  pretty  heavy  one  in  these  days  of  liberty  and 
equality." 

"  Who  cares  for  what  a  boy  wishes ! "  said  Sydney.  •'  Boys 
know  neither  their  own  minds  nor  their  best  interests.  Of 
what  use  are  fathers  and  mothers  but  to  guide  their  decisions  ? 
You  should  not  have  listened  to  me,  sir  ! " 

"  Perhaps  not,"  said  Colonel  Lowe,  playing  with  a  paper- 
knife  carelessly.  "  But  if  I  should  not,  you  are  not  the  person 
to  tell  me  of  it." 

"And  if  not  I,  who  then  pray?"  answered  Sydney.  "I 
suppose  it  is  more  my  affair  than  any  other  person's  if  my 
whole  life  is  ruined  that  you  may  have  had  a  plaything  ? " 

"  Drop  that,  sir  ? "  cried  the  Colonel,  turning  round  on  him 
with  suddeji  fierceness.  "  You  ought  to  know  by  now  what  I 
can  bear  and  what  I  will  not,  even  from  you.  However,  I 


EXPLANATIONS.  213 

have  brought  you  here  to  reason,  not  to  wrangle,"  he  continued 
more  quietly  ;  "  and  wrangling  is  caddish.  Tell  me,  what  are 
you  proposing  to  yourself  with  respect  to  Miss  Drummond]" 

"  I  don't  know  that  I  am  proposing  anything  to  myself  with 
respect  to  Miss  Drtimmond,"  answered  Sydney  sulkily. 

"  Then  you  are  making  a  fool  of  her  ?  All  right  I  dare  say, 
if  a  trifle  cruel.  She  is  probably  worth  nothing  better  at  the 
hands  of  a  gentleman — parvenues  seldom  are." 

"  Par  venue  or  not,  she  is  worth  more  than  all  your  Ladies  and 
Honourables  put  together.  Any  man  might  be  proud  of  Miss 
Drummond  !"  flashed  out  Sydney,  falling  headlong  into  the  trap. 

"  All  right  on  the  other  side,"  said  the  Colonel.  "  And  you 
are  not  making  a  fool  of  her  1" 

"  I  am  not,"  answered  his  son. 

"  In  which  case  you  are  meditating  an  offer  f " 

*  I  did  not  say  so,"  he  replied. 

"  Perhaps  have  already  made  it  ?  " 

"  Neither  did  I  say  that,"  said  Sydney. 

"  I  am  glad  of  your  disclaimers,  my  dear  boy.  As  things  are 
with  us,  any  intentions — of  an  honourable  kind — with  respect 
to  Miss  Drummond  would  be  decidedly  mal  a  propos.  For  the 
rest,  she  must  take  care  of  herself." 

"  My  dear  father,"  said  Sydney  with  an  impertinent  smile, 
"  perhaps  we  shall  come  to  a  better  understanding  together  if 
you  will  stick  to  facts  and  take  nothing  for  granted.  It  is  only 
women  who  jump  to  conclusions  from  insufficient  premises." 

"  Thanks'  for  the  lesson  in  dialectics,"  said  the  Colonel. 
"  Facts  then  it  shall  be  :  and  I  will  begin  with  one  I  would 
willingly  have  spared  you.  I,  and  you  in  consequence,  are 
both  ruined." 

The  craven  spirit  of  the  man  went  down.  He  turned  as 
white  as  Dora  might  have  done,  and  his  very  lips  were  pale. 

"  Ruined  !  you  are  surely  joking,  sir! "  he  gasped. 

"  I  wish  I  was,"  said  the  Colonel  quietly. 

"  But  what  am  I  to  do  1 "  cried  Sydney.  Then,  by  the  grace 
of  an  after-thought  he  added  ;  "  what  are  we  all  to  do  ? " 

"  What  you  have  to  do  is  to  marry  money,  by  which  we  shall 
all  profit,"  said  the  father. 

"  All  very  well  to  say  marry  money,"  said  Sydney  looking  at 
his  nails,  "  That  is  sooner  said  than  done," 


21 4  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"Not  at  all :  it  is  waiting  for  you.  Julia  Manley  would  jump 
at  you.  This  I  know  for  a  fact ;  and  she  has  money  enough  in 
all  conscience — five  thousand  a  year." 

"  A  woman  like  a  camel ! — with,  sandy  hair  and  freckles !  " 
said  Sydney  in  a  tone  of  disgust. 

"  Golden  hair,  my  boy,  and  beauty  spots — with  five  thousand 
a  year  to  gild  them." 

"  Not  to  me,  sir.  She  is  hideous,  and  if  she  was  Miss  Kil- 
mansegg  herself  she  would  be  hideous  all  the  same." 

"Oh!  after 'a  year's  marriage  all  women  are  pretty  much 
alike,"  said  his  father  :  "  excepting  indeed  that  the  odds  are  in 
favour  of  the  plain  ones.  They  wear  the  best  and  want  less 
looking  after  in  all  ways.  Five  thousand  a  year  will  make 
Julia  Manley's  camel's  face  prettier  than  Dora  Drummond's 
wax-doll  beauty,  with  not  five-pence  to  give  it  consistency. 
You  will  see.  A  nice  house  and  plenty  of  cash — and  she  will 
be  quite  handsome  in  your  eyes  before  your  heir  is  born.  And 
good  temper  and  habit  will  do  the  rest." 

"  All  very  well  I  dare  say,  if  one  entered  into  the  thing 
quite  free ;  but — I  had  better  confess  it  now — I  am  in  love  with 
Dora  Drummond,"  said  Sydney  with  a  burst. 

"  Of  not  the  slightest  consequence',  my  dear  fellow.  Many  a 
man  before  yourself  has  loved  one  woman  by  inclination  and 
married  another  by  necessity.  I  have  not  the  faintest  objec- 
tion to  your  loving  Hamley's  pretty  little  girl,  but  I  bar  the 
banns.  "  Unless,"  he  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  cut  a  sheet  of 
paper  carelessly,  "  you  are  prepared  to  turn  into  the  world  on 
your  own  account,  without  a  halfpenny  from  me,  present  or  to 
come." 

"  But  why  is  Miss  Drummond  to  be  tabooed  of  all  women  ?" 
said  Sydney.  "  She  is  pretty,  lady-like,  well-bred,  and- 1  am 
fond  of  her  ;  why  is  she  to  be  thrust  out  into  the  cold  ? " 

"  She  is  not  tabooed ;  it  is  only  her  want  of  money  that  won't 
fit.  Let  Hamley  give  her  only  two  thousand  a  year,  and  I  say 
amen  with  all  my  heart.  You  see  I  rate  her,  as  woman  with 
woman,  worth  three  thousand  a  year  more  than  Julia  Manley ; 
which  is  ranking  her  high.  But  if,  as  I  suspect,  it.  is  your 
pretty  Dora  and  an  empty  purse,  I  say  no,  unless  you  have 
resources  of  which  I  know  nothing." 

"  At  least  let  me  try,"  said  Sydney  dejectedly. 


EXPLANATIONS.  215 

"  Like  Bruce's  spider  ?     By  all  means.     And  if  you  fail  ?* 

The  young  man  was  silent. 

"  Well !  if  you  fail,  what  then,  Syd  ? "  his  father  repeated. 

"  I  am  sure  I  don't  know,"  he  answered  sullenly. 

"  No  1  I  do.  Your  decision  will  rest  then  between  two  al- 
ternatives— marrying  Julia  Manley,  or  hopeless  and  irremedi- 
able ruin." 

"  I  suppose  Cragfoot  will  stand  where  it  does  ?  "  said  Sydney. 

"  Probably  ;  but  not  for  us.  It  is  mortgaged  up  to  the  hilt. 
I  tell  you  Syd,"  he  continued  earnestly,  "  we  are  ruined  ;  and  I 
see  no  way  out  of  the  wood  save  by  Julia  Manley." 

"  At  least,  I  will  try  old  Hamley  first,"  said  Sydney,  sudden- 
ly changing  colour. 

"  By  all  means.  You  won't  succeed.  It's  my  belief  he  has 
his  own  reason  for  keeping  that  girl  single." 

"  What  the  deuce  do  you  mean,  sir  ?"  cried  Sydney  irritably. 
"  If  I  thought  that  I  would  break  his  head." 

"  You  had  better  keep  your  hands  clean,"  said  Colonel  Lowe. 
"  Perhaps  he  is  looking  out  for  a  title,  and  means  to  sell  her 
only  whenjie  has  made  his  market.  There's  Merrian.  The 
old  shoeblack  may  be  ambitious  of  getting  his  name  in  Debrett ; 
or  he  may  be  looking  forward  to  Mrs.  Hamley's  death.  She 
is  tough,  but  he's  twenty  years  her  junior  if  a  day." 

"  Don't  say  that,  father ;  it  maddens  me  ! "  cried  Sydney 
passionately.  "  I  swear  to  you,  if  I  believed  that  he  had  de- 
signs on  Dora  in  the  future,  I  would  take  her  away  to-night !  " 

"  Don't  be  a  fool,  Syd,"  returned  his  father.  "  Take  the  girl 
away  to  what  1 — absolute  beggary  !  You  would  find  no  home 
here,  and  you  have  no  income  in  your  hands  or  your  head.  Let 
us  understand  one  another.  It  is  time.  I  have  been  an  in- 
dulgent father  to  you,  but  everything  has  its  limits.  Mine  is, 
your  marrying  a  penniless  parvenue.  If  you  were  to  do  so,  I 
swear,  in  my  turn,  that  you  might  starve  before  my  eyes  before 
I  would  give  you  a  crust  ;  and  if  I  came  into  millions  not  one 
sixpence  would  be  left  to  you.  You  know,  Syd,  I  am  never 
violent,  but  I  am  determined.  And  now  you  have  it." 

'  Your  words  are  hard,  sir,"  said  Sydney,  looking  down. 

With  much  bluster  he  had  but  little  of  the  tenacity  of  a  real 
fighter  in  him.  A  tyrant  over  subordinates,  he  was  a  coward 
vhen  a  resolute  will  opposed  him  ;  and  his  father,  who,  to  do 


216  "WHAT  WOTTT.n  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

him  justice,  hated  the  task,  knew  he  could  bully  him  into  sub- 
mission whenever  he  chose  to  assume  a  certain  tone  which  meant 
he  was  riot  to  be  trifled  with. 

"  If  my  words  are  hard  my  deeds  will  be  harder,"  said  Colo- 
nel Lowe. 

"  Still  I  have  yet  pei  mission  to  do  my  best  with  that  brute  1" 
said  Sydney  after  a  pause ;  during  which,  handsome  though  he 
was,  he  had  a  curious  kind  of  likeness  to  a  rat  in  a  trap. 

"  By  all  means.  And  when  you  have  done  you  best,  come  to 
me  and  tell  me  the  result." 

A  And  if  Mr.  Hamley  refuses  ?— father,  I  do  love  her  !  " 

u  I  shall  be  sorry  for  you.  But  he  will  refuse  ;  and  then  you 
must  marry  Julia  Manley." 

"  If  he  consents  so  far  as  to  give  very  little  down,  and  to 
make  only  a  provisional  settlement — you  will  not  oppose  me 
then  1 " 

The  Colonel  smiled,  and  yet  half  sadly.  He  thought  his  son 
would  have  shown  more  pluck,  more  determination,  than  this 
pitiful  trying  here  and  there  for  a  way  of  escape.  He  was  sorry 
for  him,  but  he  was  contemptuous  too. 

"  I  will  say  amen  to  any  scheme  you  can  propose,  my  dear 
fellow,  that  will  give  you  a  gentleman's  income  and  pay  fifty 
thousand  pounds  over  and  aibove  your  immediate  wants,"  he 
said.  "  Get  even  a  thousand  a  year  with  your  pretty 
Dora,  and  I  will  not  refuse  my  consent ;  which  is  being  liberal. 

"  I  will  go  to  Abbey  Holme  to-morrow,"  said  Sydney  ;  but 
he  did  not  speak  confidently,  and  his  father  knew  that  his 
hopes  were  as  few  as  his  own. 

"  All  right,"  he  answered.  "  Now  let  us  go  and  have  a  game 
at  billiards.  Ah  !  if  you  could  do  everything  as  well  as  your 
favourite  hazard, you  would  not  have  far  to  go  for  your  fortune." 

"  It  is  a  pity  you  did  not  teach  me  something  more  profitable 
while  there  was  time,"  retorted  Sydney,  as  they  lighted  their 
cigars  and  strolled  smoking  towards  the  billiard-room. 

While  this  conversation  had  been  going  on  at  Cragfoot,  the 
Hamley  carriage,  bearing  its  four  silent  occupants,  bad  been 
rolling  rapidly  to  the  Quest.  It  was  by  no  means  a  comfortable 
drive.  Things  never  are  comfortable  when  Fear  sits  on  one 
side  and  Nemesis  on  the  other. 

At  the  Quest  they  found  the  Countess  and  Lord  Merrian 


EXPLANATIONS.  217 

both  at  home.  The  Earl  was  out  with  his  agent  looking  over 
the  land.  They  saw  him  afterwards  in  the  road  ;  a  stout-legged 
ruddy-faced  man,  in  a  bulky  shooting-jacket  and  leathern  gai- 
ters, looking  like  a  well-to-do  grazier  rather  than  a  man  of 
fashion  or  an  hereditary  legislator  consecrated  by  birth  to  pat- 
riotism and  the  public  service.  He  was  too  well  known  by 
sight  to  the  others  for  them  to  wonder  at  his  unaristocratic 
look ;  but  Patricia  was  immensely  astonished  at  his  common- 
place appearance.  She  had  an  idea  that  Lords  and  Ladies 
were  of  a  different  material  from  the  rest  of  the  world;  and 
that  nature  herself  had  delivered  them  visibly  from  the  bondage 
of  mediocrity  and  endowed  them  with  their  superior  creden- 
tials. 

But  if  the  Earl  was  homely  the  Countess  was  superb — the 
typical  countess  of  splendid  attire,  magnificent  beauty,  queenly 
manners,  and  looking  about  thirty  when  she  was  fifteen  years 
older.  Lord  Merrian  too,  was  delightful.  He  was  a  tall, 
poetic-looking,  handsome  young  man ;  well-mannered,  superbly 
got-up,  a  trifle  affected,  but  both  clever  and  ambitious  ;  at  this 
moment  going  through  a  temporary  phase  of  intellectual  rather 
than  practical  conscientiousness,  by  which  he  did  honestly 
desire  to  know  the  truth  and  live  up  to  the  better  thing,  with- 
out having  the  moral  thoroughness  which  would  enable  him  to 
do  either.  He  was  an  imaginative  person,  who  took  impres- 
sions for  convictions  and  fancies  for  proofs ;  not  of  strong 
character,  and  apt  to  be  unduly  influenced  by  his  surroundings  ; 
which  gave  him  an  undeserved  appearance  of  insincerity.  He 
professed  to  take  mournful  views  of  life  and  to  be  penetrated 
with  a  sense  of  the  general  hollowness  of  things.  A  mild 
sceptic  on  his  own  account,  and  with  no  definite  creed  on  any 
side,  he  deplored  the  absence  of  faith  in  the  masses  ;  a  Con- 
servative, holding  to  the  righteousness  of  a  privileged  class,  he 
deplored  their  degradation ;  rich — at  least  absolutely,  if  rela- 
tively poor  for  a  peer's  son — titled,  courted,  and  a  social  darling 
of  the  most  cherished  kind,  he  yearned  for  a  crusade,  he  said, 
where  men  would  go  out  to  fight  for  some  great  stirring  cause, 
flinging  off  the  deadening  fetters  of  society  and  the  silken  cor- 
dage of  our  modern  luxury. 

It  was  pretty  and  pathetic  to  hear  him  talk  thus,  lowering 
bis  soft  voice  and  raising  his  handsome  eyes  in  between  the  rare 


2]  8  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

Steinberger  and  the  'twenty-seven  port ;  his  smooth  young  face 
arranged  with  care,  his  costly  button-hole  bouquet  shedding 
sweet  scents  with  every  breath,  the  ball  at  his  foot,  and  in  his 
hand  every  good  gift  by  which  humanity  can  be  blessed  and 
life  made  happy.  Women  praised  him  for  his  earnestness,  and 
called  him  "  a  sweet  fellow  "  and  a  "  most  charming  young  man 
with  such  nice  feeling  "  and  "  such  good  sentiments  ; "  men 
laughed  at  him  for  his  affectation  and  called  him  a  humbug  and 
a  sop.  But  he  was  not  a  humbug.  He  was  theoretically  in 
earnest ;  only  practically  he  had  not  enough  force  to  defy  the 
world,  deny  himself,  and  act  out  his  higher  faith  in  the  face  of 
the  society  he  affected  to  decry.  His  was  not  the  stuff  of  which 
martyrs  are  made ;  afnd  while  he  looked  towards  Pisgah  car- 
ried daily  sacrifice  to  Mammon.  But  it  soothed  his  conscience 
that  he  should  talk  ;  and  he  did  not  feel  saddened  by  the 
hiatus  between  his  word  and  his  deed. 

His  manner  of  being  and  his  style  of  conversation  pleased  the 
Abbey  Holme  girls.  Naturally  he  devoted  himself  to  them 
during  the  visit,  the  three  sitting  in  a  recess  a  little  apart  from 
the  rest — Lord  Merrian  holding  forth.  He  was  fon<l  of  draw- 
ing-room declamation,  a.nd  especially  fond  of  declaiming  in  a 
corner  with  a  few  pretty  women  as  his  audience.  To  Dora  he 
was  of  course  delightful.  Was  he  not  a  young  lord,  well-look- 
ing and  gallant  ?  and  did  not  his  handsome  eyes  rest  on  her 
with  a  kind  of  approving  admiration  that  showed  his  cultivated 
taste  1  To  Patricia,  still  in  the  age  of  candid  credulity,  he  was  a 
nineteenth  century  Saint  John.  His  second-hand  Emersonian 
turns  of  thought  and  modes  of  expression  struck  a  chord  in  her 
own  heart  that  vibrated  with  a  passionate  echo.  Her  face 
lighted  up  as  Lord  Merrian  spoke  of  the  valuelessness  of  the 
individual  and  the  grandeur  of  truth,  of  the  need  for  self- 
sacrifice  and  the  sorrows  of  humanity.  She  felt  inclined  to 
hold  out  her  hand  to  him  and  call  him  brother.  Had  she  been 
a  man  she  would  have  proposed  a  league  between  them  on  the 
spot,  by  which  they  would  have  bound  themselves  like  knights 
of  old  to  resist  the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil,  and  to  devote 
themselves  to  the  good  of  humanity  and  the  glory  of  God. 
Being  a  woman,  all  she  could  do  was  to  raise  her  large  eyes, 
dilated,  dark,  and  tender,  to  his  face,  and  to  assent  to  his  views 
with  an  outflow  of  enthusiasm  that  partly  stirred  and  partly 


EXPLANATIONS.  219 

amused  him.  He  thought  what  a  grand  creature  she  was  ; 
just  the  kind  of  woman  to  lead  a  man  to  the  ultimate  heights, 
and  make  him  a  hero  or  a  saint,  according  to  his  bent  and 
the  development  of  his  muscles.  A  little  untutored  perhaps  ; 
but  top-lovely  not  to  be  forgiven  this  or  any  other  flaw  there 
might  be  in  her  crown  of  perfection.  He  was  charmed  with 
her.  She  was  so  fresh,  he  said  to  his  mother  afterwards  ;  so 
deliciou&ly  quaint  and  simple  ;  a  girl  who  reminded  him  of  an 
early  Christian  martyr,  or  of  Hypathia,  or  Vittoria  Colonna;  and 
he  too  added  what  Colonel  Lowe  had  said — or  Joan  of  Arc. 

Of  Dora  he  formed  another  estimate,  but  one  as  true  in  its 
own  way.  A  clever,  self- con  trolled  woman,  he  said,  leading  an 
artificial  life  and  wearing  a  mask,  not  a  face  ;  a  woman  to  fence 
with,  to  play  with,  to  be  wary  of;  one  of  the  felidse — soft, 
silky,  stealthy,  creeping — but  trustworthy  ]  true  ?  real  1 
Scarcely  ! 

Lord  Merrian  had  not  come  to  the  mature  age  of  three-and- 
twenty  without  learning  a  few  facts  of  human  life,  and  the 
Doras  of  the  world  of  women  were  not  unfamiliar  with  him. 

Patricia  on  the  contrary  was  a  new  study  ;  and  the  young 
man's  curiosity  was  roused,  as  Dr.  Fletcher's  had  been  before 
him.  He  mentally  determined  that  he  would  see  this  noble 
creature  again  before  long,  that  he  would  make  himself  a  hero 
in  her  eyes,  and  rouse  her  enthusiasm  as  he  felt  it  could  be 
roused.  After  that  he  was  conscious  of  nothing  ;  save  perhaps 
a  vague  idea  that  Mr.  Hamley  was  popularly  supposed  to  pos- 
sess millions,  and  that  Patricia  Kemball  was  his  wife's  niece. 

On  the  whole  the  visit  was  a  success.  The  Countess  was 
gracious  in  bearing  and  gorgeously  arrayed  ;  and  Lord  Merrian 
was  pronounced  a  most  distinguished-looking  young  man  by 
Mrs.  Hamley,  and  not  so  far  amiss  by  Mr.  Hamley.  Mrs. 
Hamley  felt  when  they  left  that  she  had  made  a  decided  step 
upwards,  and  had  planted  herself  at  last  in  the  same  hemis- 
phere as  her  desires.  She  was  convinced  that  they  would  be 
asked  to  the  Quest  this  year  ;  and  when  that  was  done,  the 
last  huis  clos  would  be  thrown  down ;  the  last  stronghold  of 
exclusiveness  would  have  surrendered. 

As  they  drove  home  she  was  quite  gay,  almost  playful ;  and 
even  Patricia  came  in  for  a  share  in  the  wintry  sun  of  her 
smiles.  Both  she  and  Mr.  Hamley  had  seen  that  Lord  Mer- 


220  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO.  LOVE?" 

rian  had  paid  her  just  that  extra  amount  of  attention  which 
implies  preference,  and  for  the  moment  she  was  in  the  ascendant, 
and  had  "  the  hands"  usually  accorded  to  Dora. 

For  the  moment,  indeed,  the  two  girls  seemed  to  have 
changed  places.  Grim  to  Dora,  Mr.  Hamley  was  quite  familiar 
and  jocular  with  Patricia.  He  "  chaffed  "  her  about  her  con- 
quest, and  called  her  "  my  lady  "  all  the  way  home,  till  the  girl's 
burning  indignation  nearly  choked  her.  He  rolled  his  eyes 
and  wagged  his  head  and  smacked  his  lips  as  he  said,  "  Oh !  / 
saw,  Miss  Slyboots,  what  game  you  were  after ! "  OF  "  Well,  my 
Lady  Merrian,  and  when  are  we  to  order  the  bride-cake,  eh  1 " 
or  "  When  a  certain  young  lady's  queening  it  at  the  Quest,  1 
suppose  she'll  be  too  grand  for  you  and  me,  Lady,"  and  so  on, 
with  never  a  softening  line  in  his  face  in  answer  to  dear  Dora's 
shy  eyes  and  tender  smiles  and  pretty  lisp,  and  all  those  subtle, 
secret  caresses  of  hers  which  generally  had  the  power  of  putting 
him  into  a  good  humour  when  he  was  cross,  and  of  making  life 
very  sweet  and  pleasant  to  him.  . 

To-day  he  was  impervious.  Her  tenderest  looks  fell  on  him 
like  dew  on  granite,  and  softened  him  no  more  than  the  dew 
would  have  softened  the  granite.  He  had  not  got  over  the 
scene  at  Cragfoot,  and  he  had  to  have  it  out  with  her,  as  he 
said  to  himself,  before  he  forgave  her.  Besides,  though  Lord 
Merrian  had  paid  Patricia  the  most  attention,  to  outsiders  he 
had  looked  at  Dora  admiringly  ;  and  Mr.  Hamley  was  well  up 
in  the  science  of  secret  preference,  and  by  what  methods  it 
could  be  shown.  Just  before  they  came  to  Abbey  Holme  he 
took  occasion  to  say,  speaking  of  .Lord  Merrian,  "  Yes  ;  I'm  no 
tuft  hunter,  I  believe" — he  was,  though  he  did  not  acknowledge 
it ;  "  but  I  could  not  help  observing  the  difference  between  this 
young»man  and  that  young  hound,  Lowe.  I  have  lived  pretty 
long  among  gentlefolks,  but  hang  me  if  ever  I  saw  one  as  im- 
pudent as  that  jackanapes  was  to-day.  However,  you  could 
permit  him  to  address  you  as  he  did,  Dora,  is  more  than  I  can 
make  out.  It  is  that  that  gets  over  me.  To  call  you  '  Dora ' 
before  my  very  face !  I  should  like  to  have  wrung  his  neck 
for  him !  " 

"  It  was  very  rude,  very  extraordinary !  "  murmured  Dora 
meekly.  "  I  could  not  make  it  out ;  he  never  did  so  before." 

"  And  I'll  take  pretty  good  care  he  never  does  so  again,"  said 


EXPLANATIONS.  221 

Mr.  Famley.  **  I'll  Dora  him  if  he,  tries  it  on  again,  he  may 
take  his  oath  of  that ! " 

"  I  am  sure  I  do  not  know  what  possessed  him  to-day.  He 
must  have  been  out  of  his  mind ! "  said  Dora  with  a  dis- 
tressed face. 

"  He  was  drunk,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  coarsely. 

And  Dora  turned  her  head  out  of  the  window,  saying  between 
her  teeth  "  Wretch  !"  quite  naturally. 

"  I  thought  he  was  rather  free,"  put  in  Mrs.  Hamley,  looking 
kindly  at  her  favourite.  "  But  I  don't  see  how  Dora  could  have 
helped  it.  I  don't  think  you  encouraged  him,  my  dear  1 " 

"  Oh,  no,  indeed  I  did  not,  dear ! "  said  Dora  pleadingly. 
"  I  was  as  much  astonished  at  it  as  you  could  have  been.  I 
never  encouraged  Mr.  Lowe,  never ! " 

Patricia  put  her  hand  over  her  eyes.  Her  burning  indignation 
at  Mr.  Hamley's  ungainly  playfulness  to  herself  suddenly  died 
out,  and  she  became  chilled,  as  if  the  air  had  grown  colder  than 
before,  when  she  heard  Dora's  deliberate  untruth.  '  She  knew 
that  Sidney  Lowe  had  been  encouraged ;  did  she  not  remem- 
ber that  walk,  and  all  those  long,  half-whispered  and  wholly 
unintelligible  conversations  together  1  She  wondered  how  Dora 
could  have  the  courage — the  bad  courage — to  say  such  a  thing 
so  unblushingly  before  her. 

"  I  saw  how  much  annoyed  you  were,"  continued  Dora,  turn- 
ing her  eyes  meekly  on  her  master ;"  "  and  I  would  have  given 
worlds  to  have  stopped  him.  But  I  could  not !  and  I  was  so 
dreadfully  distressed  I  "  It  was  getting  dark  now.  Leaning 
forward  to  impress  her  grief  more  closely  on  Mr.  Hamley,  Dora 
slid  her  soft,  caressing  little  hand  into  his ;  and  Mr.  Hamley, 
squeezing  it — forgave  her. 

"  I  think  you  were  hard  on  Dora  to-day,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley, 
as  she  and  her  husband  sat  before  the  fire  in  her  dressing-room, 
waiting  for  the  dressing-bell  to  ring.  "It  is  only  what  we 
must  expect ;  she  is  a  pretty  girl,  and  young  men  will  pay  her 
attention,  of  course.  That  young  Mr.  Lowe — I  have  often 
thought  he  admired  her ;  and  though  Lord  Merrian  paid  Patri- 
cia the  most  attention,  still  he  looked  very  often  at  Dora,  and 
he  might  have  talked  more  to  my  niece  as  a  blind.  Young 
people  will  be  young  people  ;  and  though  I  do  not  encourage 
flirting,  or  anything  undesirable,  we  must  expect  that  the  girl 
will  be  sought  after !  " 


222  "  WHAT  WOULD  votr  no,  LOVE  ? " 

"I  don't  want  young  men  about  Miss  Drummond,"  answered 
Mr.  Hamley  stiffly.  "  I  have  brought  her  up  at  great  expense 
to  be  one  of  ourselves,  and  I  do  not  relish  the  idea  of  having 
spent  all  that  money  for  another  man's  advantage.  We  are  get- 
ting old  people,  my  dear," — when  Mr.  Hamley  wanted  to  please 
his  wife  he  used  to  bracket  himself  with  her,  and  deny  his  com- 
parative youth  in  favour  of  her  age — "  an<l  being  old  people,  01 
on  the  way,  Dora  is  useful  to  us.  She  makes  a  little  life  in  the 
house,  and  she  is  nice  in  her  ways,  and  so  on." 

"  Good  gracious,  Mr.  Hamley,  we  have  Patricia !  "  said  Mrs. 
Hamley  sharply.  •"  She  is  younger  than  Dora." 

"  And  not  half  so  entertaining,"  said  Mr.  Hamley.  "  Your 
niece  may  be  a  good  sort  of  young  person ;  I  do  not  deny  that , 
but  she  is  horrid  heavy  on  hand  all  the  same.  She  can't  do 
the  things  Dora  can.  I  call  her  a  wretched  performer  on  the 
piano,  and  she  has  no  manner  as  Dora  has." 

"  She  has  not  had  Dora's  advantages  of  course,"  said  Mrs. 
Hamley.  "  No  girl  brought  up  as  poor  Patricia  has  been  can 
possibly  be  equal  to  one  cared  for  and  educated  by  a  lady,  like 
Dora.  For  wliat  she  has  gone  through  I  consider  her  remark- 
able ;  and  at  all  events  she  is  a  Kemb;ill,  which  counts  for  some- 
thing." 

"  She  ought  to  be  able  to  count  something  to  the  good," 
Mr.  Hamley  answered.  "  But  make,  the  best  of  it  you  can,  you 
cannot  make  her  a  patch  on  Dora." 

"  I  hate  such  vulgar  expressions  !"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  crossly. 

"  Well,  it  isn't  quite  the  thing  perhaps,"  apologized  her  hus- 
band ;  "  but  I  mean  to  say  you  know  what  I  am  at." 

"  To  go  back  to  our  starting  point,  you  say  you  don't  wish 
Dora  to  marry  1 "  asked  Mrs.  Hamley. 

She  had  her  idea,  and  she  was  resolved  to  ventilate  it  before 
dinner. 

"  Certainly  not.  I  can  leave  her  comfortable,"  said  the 
brewer  decidedly. 

"  But  I  suppose  you  would  not  refuse  a  good  offer ;  say  such, 
an  offer  as  Lord  Merrian  for  the  girl  ? "  Mrs.  Hamley  asked  this 
loftily — lords  were  becoming  her  everyday  acquaintance  now. 

"  Wouldn't  I  just  1 — all  the  same  ae  if  he  was  that  black- 
guard young  Lowe  yonder,  or  the  stable-boy  ! "  Mr.  Handoy 
answered,  a  little  more  roughly  than  was  usual  with  him  when 
"  conversing  "  with  his  wife.  "  Lord  or  no  lord,  I'll 


EXPLANATIONS.  223 

of  them  here  poking  after  the  girl.  I've  paid  for  her  bringing 
up,  and  I  consider  I  have  the  right  to  keep  what  I've  paid  for. 
I've  heard  speak  of  pelicans,  but  I  don't  feel  inclined  to  copy 
'em." 

*'  It  is  rather  a  novel  way  of  looking  at  the  matter,  and  I 
must  say  a  sordid  one,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  I  cannot  think 
with  you  that  in  adopting  a  child  you  are  buying  a  slave." 

"Don't  you  ?"  he  answered  coolly.  "I'm  sorry  we  cannot  put 
our  horses'  heads  together  in  the  matter.  But  whether  we  do 
or  we  don't,  I  must  be  leader  here,  Lady ;  and  if  I  leave  you 
full  possession  of  your  own  to  do  as  you  like  with,  you  have 
no  cause  of  complaint.  If  you  are  so  anxious  to  get  the  young 
ladies  a  husband  with  a  handle  to  his  name  get  him  for  Miss 
Kemball.  I'll  give  her  as  handsome  a  turn-out  and  make  as 
good  a  settlement  on  her  if  she  marries  to  please  me — and 
you — as  any  girl  need  have.  And  I'm  sure  I  can't  say  fair- 
er for  a  young  person  as  is  no  relation  to  me,  and  that  I 
don't  especially  admire." 

"  You  are  the  oddest  compound  of  generosity  and  tyranny- 
Mr.  Hamley,  I  ever  saw!  "  said  his  wife,  half  pettishly,  half 
pleasantly ;  for  they  had  their  little  conjugal  flirtations  togeth, 
er  when  they  were  alone.  At  first  for  policy ;  but  as  time  had 
gone  on,  and  Mrs.  Hamley  had  followed  the  law  of  habit, 
she  had  become  both  more  oblivious  to  her  husband's  defects 
and  more  tolerant  of  those  she  still  saw,  as  well  as  person- 
ally more  affectionate  to  him.  His  strength  and  vigour 
seemed  to  stay  her  own  failing  powers,  and  she  leant  on  him 
more  than  she  had  done  in  the  beginning;  while  he  was 
daily  more  conscious  of  the  twenty  years'  gap  between 
them,  if  daily  more  careful  to  conceal  that  consciousness  and 
go  through  his  appointed  task  creditably. 

"Ah  my  dear,"  he  answered,*his  thick  lips  parted  into  what 
he  meant  to  be  a  fascinating  smile,  and  his  small"  keen  eyes 
turned  with  such  softness  as  he  could  command  on  his  aged 
wife,  "  I  would  do  more  for  you  than  take  your  niece  into  my 
house,  and  treat  her  like  my  own.  What  I  did  for  my 
cousin's  child  I  can  surely  do  for  your  brother's  daughter;  for 
though  I  am  but  a  rough  diamond,  Lady,  I  never  forget 
who  you  are  and  what  I  owe  you.  You  have  chipped  me  out 
of  the  rough  as  I  may  say,  and  I  don't  begrudge  my  thanks." 


224  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  You  are  very  good,"  said  his  wife  softly,  and  stroked  his 
thick  hand  almost  tenderly  with  her  long  bony  fingers. 

Poor  soul,  she  meant  it  well,  though  she  did  make  his  flesh 
creep  ! 

"  There  !  I  think  I  have  settled  the  old  lady's  hash  for  a  bit," 
was  his  unspoken  thought  as,  the  dressing-bell  ringing,  he 
stooped  over  her  gallantly  and  kissed  her  powdered  flaccid  cheek. 
Then  he  went  into  his  own  r»>m  and  stood  before  the  glass, 
fingering  his  bushy  whiskers  complacently. 

And  standing  there,  large,  florid,  black-haired,  showy,  he 
smiled  approvingly  at  the  thing  he  saw. 

"  A  fine  figure  of  a  man  when  all's  said  and  done  1 "  he  said 
to  himself!  "  I  don't  know  a  finer  1" 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

THE  POSTERN  GATB. 

tHIS  conversation,  wherein  he  had  been  able  to  lay  down 
the  law  and  set  his  foot  on  the  budding  head  of  the 
young  scorpion — the  thought  was  his  own — restored 
Mr.  Hamley  to  his  wonted  self-satisfaction.  Perhaps  that  sur- 
vey in  the  glass  had  something  to  do  with  it.  The  evening 
therefore  passed  oft  with  an  amount  of  cheerfulness  not  usual  in 
the  evenings  at  Abbey  Holme.  The  three  played  their  beloved 
bezique,  and  the  good  humour  of  the  trio  did  not  suffer  by  any 
of  the  accidents  of  the  game.  Patricia  was  "  out,"  of  course  ; 
but  she  was  not  snubbed  as  usual.  Indeed  Aunt  Hamley  made 
room  for  her  to  come  and  sit  by  her,  and  tried,  as  so  often  be- 
fore, to  teach  her  the  mysteries  of  royal  and  common  marriage, 
single  and  double  bezique,  sequences  and  tens  and  aces.  And 
Patricia  for  very  gratitude  gave  her  mind  to  it,  and  did  her 
best  to  understand  it,  but  could  not  get  beyond  the  length  of 
thinking  it  all  an  incomprehensible  muddle,  and  nothing  in  it 
w.ien  you  got  to  the  end  of  it.  Still  she  was  happy  in  feeling 
In  favour ;  happy  in  thinking  that  a  man  in  Lord  Merrian's  posi- 
tion, with  his  wealth  and  power,  could  hold  such  grand  views  and 
be  so  entirely  noble-minded ;  happy  in  the  remembrance  of 
some  poor  people  for  whom  she  had  given  Catherine  Fletcher 
a  contribution  out  of  her  small  store  the  other  day,  and  to  whom 
this  timely  help  had  been  of  infinite  service  ;  happy  in  having 
seen  by  a  Times  telegram  that  Gordon's  ship,  the  Arrow,  had 
got  safely  to  her  first  station,  and  that  she  might  therefore  be 
soon  expecting  a  letter;  and  in  the  general  amiability  of  the 
time  even  Mr.  Harnley  thought  her  really  a  very  nice-looking 
young  person,  and  not  so  bad  a  girl  after  all. 

As  tor  dear  Dura,  she  was  so  sweet  and  pretty,  so  animated 

yet  so  gentle,   with  such  a  lovely  flush  on   her  round,   pink 

cheeks,  and  "  so  darling  "  altogether,  he  wondered  how  he  could 

have  been  such  a  bear  to  her  to-day.  And  yet  when  he  remern- 

o 


226  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOV  -. 

bered  Sydney  Lowe,  and  that  odd-looking  scene  in  the  conserva- 
tory, he  did  not  find  his  bearishness  so  very  remarkable.  Of  one 
thing,  however,  he  was  quite  sure — whatever  that  young  jack- 
anapes might  feel,  dear  Dora  thought  nothing  of  him,  and  she 
would  not,  even  if  she  was  asked,  leave  Abbey  Holme :  and 
Mrs.  Hamley 

Abbey  Holme  was  a  large  house,  thickly  carpeted  through- 
out, and  with  well-oiled  locks  and  hinges.  Doors  and  windows 
were  all  heavily  bolted  and  barred,  but  neither  bolt  nor  bar 
made  more  noise  than  the  piston  of  a  steam-engine,  and  every- 
thing worked  with  a  silent  precision  that  was  part  of  the  Ham- 
ley  luxury  of  living.  Only  one  door  was  not  barred  with  extra 
bolts.  This  was  a  low-arched,  oaken  door,  studded  and  banded 
with  iron  in  a  fantastic  mediaeval  foshion  that  looked  formid- 
able and  was  of  no  use  ;  a  kind  of  make-believe  postern-gate, 
opening  on  to  the  side  shrubbery  and  for  show  only,  for  it  was 
never  used.  Indeed  the  key  had  been  extracted  from  Mr. 
Hamley's  private  drawer  for  nearly  three  years  now  ;  but  he 
had  not  missed  it.  Such  a  mere  symbol  as  it  was  he  had  for- 
gotten it  had  ever  been. 

But  there  was  one  person  in  the  house  to  whom  that  key  was 
no  mere  symbol,  but  a  thing  of  very  positive  use.  Nearly  three 
years  ago  Dora  had  purloined  it,  and  thus,  had  held  her  free- 
dom of  nights,  if  not  of  days,  in  her  own  hands.  And  for  the 
last  year  she  had  used  her  freedom  in  company  with  Mr.  Syd- 
ney Lowe. 

Once  a  week  or  so,  when  the  Abbey  Holme  household  was 
asleep,  a  little  figure  muffled  up  in  a  waterproof,  hooded  and 
veiled,  used  to  open  the  third  door  on  the  corridor  and  steal 
down  the  broad  staircase,  with  no  more  noise  of  swinging  hinge 
or  falling  feet  than  if  a  ghost  had  been  abroad ;  used  to  glide 
across  the  hall,  every  step  counted  till  the  nailed  and  banded 
door  was  reached  ;  used  to  feel  with  small  pink  hands  for  the 
keyhole,  putting  in  the  key  and  shooting  the  lock  with  about 
as  much  sound  as  the  scratching  and  the  falling  of  a  pin  would 
have  made  ;  used  to  draw  the  key ;  stand  for  a  moment  on  the 
top  step ;  and  then  on  a  cry  which  only  her  ear  could  have  dis- 
tinguished from  the  hoot  of  an  owl,  used  to  steal  round  the 
angle  into  the  dark  walk  where  Sydney  Lowe  was  waiting  fo* 


THE  POSTERN  GATE.  227 

her.     This  had  gone  on  as  was  said  for  over  a  year  now,  and 
no  human  being  had  the  smallest  suspicion  of  the  truth. 

To  be  sure,  Alice  Garbh,  Dora's  maid,  used  sometimes  to 
wonder  how  her  young  mistress's  waterproof  had  got  so  wet 
when  she  was  not  out  all  yesterday  ;  but  she  had  no  theory 
to  explain  the  wonder,  and  contented  herself  with  thinking  it 
queer  and  talking  it  over  in  the  housekeeper's  room  Twice, 
when  she  had  spoken  of  it,  some  of  the  servants  had  set  them- 
selves to  watch  the  young  lady's  door;  but  as  each  time  it  was 
on  the  night  after  she  had  gone  out — when  she  was  naturally 
safe  at  home — they  had  lost  half  a  night's  rest  for  nothing ; 
and  the  mystery  remained  unsolved.  If  they  had  waited 
for  a  week  or  so,  and  had  been  as  persevering  as  they  were 
anxious,  they  might  have  been  rewarded. 

To-night  it  all  happened  just  as  usual.  Exactly  at  one  o'clock 
Dora  turned  the  handle  of  her  door,  and  came  out  into  the  cor- 
ridor. She  was  dressed  in  her  dark  grey  cloak,  with  her  hood 
over  her  head  and  a  thick  veil  over  her  face.  Brown  woollen 
socks  were  drawn  over  her  boots,  and  she  had  sacrificed  high 
heels  to  the  exigences  of  the  expedition.  The  moon  shone 
brightly ;  and  she  was  always  a  little  nervous  in  the  moonlight. 
Indeed  she  was  disturbed  altogether  to-night;  strangely  so  for 
her,  generally  so  cool,  so  collected,  and  with  no  more  nervous 
fancies  than  she  had  inconvenient  passions.  She  felt  as  if  a 
crisis  was  at  hand  ;  and  she  dreaded  lest  it  should  turn  the 
wrong  way  and  bring  her  ruin,  not  relief. 

Besides,  she  was  getting  tired  of  her  part.  More  because  of 
the  dead  weariness  of  her  life  than  because  she  loved  him  with 
that  intensity  »f  passion  which  defies  all  law  and  conquers  all 
obstacles,  and  more  as  her  expression  of  revolt  against  the  tyran- 
nous domination  to  which  she  outwardly  submitted  so  grace- 
fully than  as  a  matter  of  deliberate  choice,  she  had  entered  into 
these  secret  relations  with  Sydney  Lowe.  And  now  when  she 
was  irrevocably  caught  she  was  beginning  to  long  for  freedom. 
Lord  Merrian  had  looked  at  her  admiringly  to-day ;  and  to  be 
Lady  Merrian,  and  later  the  Countess  of  Dovedale,  was  as  a 
fool's  bauble  that  jingled  its  bells  merrily  in  her  ears.  To  be  Mrs. 
Sydney  Lowe  by  consent  of  the  authorities  had  once  seemed 
to  her  by  no  means  a  disagreeable  outlook ;  uut  she  was  getting 
weary  of  the  uncertainty  of  that  consent,  *ud  the  first  excite- 


228  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?  " 

ment  of  her  adventure  had  passed.  And  again,  in  spite  of  all 
that  had  happened,  she  did  not  so  very  madly  love  the  Man; 
she  could  have  lived  without  him,  had  she  tried,  she  thought! 
His  admiration  had  flattered,  and  his  own  love  for  her  in  the 
fiery  insistence  had  excited  and  carried  her  away.  She  had 
been  dull  and  oppressed;  always  playing  apart  and  always 
humbling  herself  in,  submission;  so  she  had  oiled  the  bolts 
and  hinges  of  the  postern-gate,  and  had  used  the  key  to  more 
purpose  of 'late  than  when  she  had  merely  played  at  being 
adventurous  and  secretly  free  in  the  beginning. 

At  the  first  it  had  been  simply  running  half-a-dozen  steps 
into  the  shrubbery  and  back  again,  feeling  awfully  wicked,  im- 
measurably brave,  and  desperately  frightened  ;  grateful  too 
thatnobigblackman  had  come  outof  the  darkness,  andcaught 
her  by  the  heels  as  she  scampered  up  the  steps  panting  and 
trembling;  and  congratulating  herself  on  her  safety  when  she 
had  crept  up  into  her  own  room  again,  and  felt  herself  the  mis- 
tress of  the  whole  sleeping  household.  These  had  been  her 
first  experiences  in  the  way  of  midnight  sorties.  Then  she  had 
ventured  a  little  farther,  and  once  right  into  the  road  over  the 
stile — the  vulnerable  point  in  the  park — where,  as  ill-luck 
would  have  it,  she  had  met  a  real  adventure  in  the  person  of 
Sydney  Lowe,  himself  out  at  that  hour  for  no  good :  a  meeting 
to  be  henceforth  continued  by  appointment,  and  on  to  the  posi- 
tion in  which  affairs  stood  at  present.  And  they  stood  awk- 
wardly enough  ;  could  scarcely  be  worse,  all  things  considered 
— Colonel  Lowe's  ruin,  and  Mr.  Hamley's  determination  not  to 
give  dear  Dora  a  farthing  if  she  married  against  his  wish,  and 
Sydney  Lowe  being  of  all  men  the  one  most  decidedly  against 
his  wish. 

"  Dora  !  I  have  been  waiting  for  you  more  than  an  hour," 
said  Sydney,  more  peevishly  than  tenderly,  as  she  glided  across 
the  walk  and  ran  into  his  arms. 

"  Poor  dear  boy  !  I  am  so  sorry !  But  I  said  one  quite 
plainly,  you  know.  I  could  not  be  sure  of  myself  before,"  said 
Dora  prettily. 

Not  even  to  Sydney  Lowe  did  she  ever  show  temper  or  her 
real  self.  The  concealment  of  her  real  feelings  under  a  false 
mask  of  amiability  had  come  to  be  a  kind  of  second  nature  with 
her,  and  she  liked  the  sentiment  of  strength  aud  of  au  inner 
unknown  and  unshared  life  that  it  gave  her. 


THE  POSTERN  GATE.  229 

"  But  I  wanted  so  much  to  see  you,  darling !  I  suppose  that 
made  me  impatient,"  he  said. 

"Well,  and  now  that  you  have  me,  what  ?"  asked  Dora. 

"  Dora,  I  and  my  father  have  had  a  jaw,"  Sydney  began. 

"  You  horrid  boy — a  what  ? "  said  Dora. 

"  Oh,  never  mind  grammar,  Dody  ! — let  me  say  what  I  have 
to  say  in  my  own  way  !"  cried  Sydney.  "My  father  has  been 
talking  to  me,  and  it  is  all  over  with  us  ! " 

"  What  do  you  mean,  Syd  ? — has  he  found  out  1 "  Dora  cried, 
clinging  to  him  in  terror. 

"  Quite  the  contrary  ;  he  has  no  idea  of  the  real  state  of  the 
case,  though  I  have  told  him  something  ;  but  the  game's  up  all 
the  same.  The  governor  has  done  something,  I  don't  know 
what,  but  the  upshot  of  it  is — he  is  ruined  and  we  have  not 
sixpence  between  us." 

"  Sydney ! "  The  pretty  little  head  went  down  on  to  his 
shoulder,  and  Dora,  whom  this  prospect  of  impecuniosity  ap- 
palled, began  to  cry. 

"  Don't  cry,  darling  ! "  he  said  soothingly.  "  What's  done 
cannot  be  undone,  and  things  may  come  right  after  all !" 

"  How  can  they  come  right  ] "  she  sobbed. 

"  I  don't  see  exactly  ;  perhaps  old  Hamley  will  corue  down 
handsomely.  I  am  going  to  ask  him  to-morrow.  That  made 
me  so  anxious  to  see  you  to-night." 

"  Oh  Sydney,  you  must  not  ask  him  !  "  she  pleaded.  "Things 
are  bad  enough  as  they  are ;  this  will  only  make  them  ten  times 
worse." 

"  But  why  should  it  make  them  worse,  Dora  ?  I  must  ask 
him  some  day.  We'  cannot  go  on  as  we  are.  I  swear  it  makes 
me  almost  mad  ! — and  we  cannot  live  without  money." 

"  And  do  you  think  he  will  !give  us  a  farthing  ?  Not  if  we 
starved.  Married  or  unmarried  he  will  not  help  us  with  six- 
pence. I  know  Mr.  Hamley  i "  said  Dora  lifting  her  head — 
the  moonlight  shining  on  her  tears — and  speaking  with  a  bitter- 
ness rare  in  her. 

"That  is  just  what  my  father  said  I  might  do  if  I  brought 
you  without  money,"  Sydney  returned.  "  If  old  Hamley  comes 
down  as  he  ought  he  will  receive  you  with  open  arms.  He  has 
taken  quite  a  liking  for  you,  Dora — and  who  indeed  could  help 
i^,  my  beauty  1 — but  he  cannot  give  us  what  he  has  not  got ; 


230  "WHAT  WOULD  VOtJ  DO,  LOVE?" 

and  he  has  not  got  enough  to  go  on  with  for  himself,  still  less 
to  set  me  up.     The  thing  now  is  to  get  old  Hamley  to  do  it." 
"  Get  him  to  set  us  up  ! — ask  that  stone,  and  you  are  just  as 
likely  to  move  it  as  Mr.  Hamley,"  said  Dora.      "  He  does  not 
want  me  to  marry  at  all !  " 

"  And  why  not  ?  "  said  Sydney  passionately,  unclasping  her 
hands  from  his  shoulders  and  standing  as  if  in  another  mo- 
ment he  would  fling  her  from  him. 

He  was  not  a  brave  man,  but  he  would  have  fought  for  a 
woman  like  a  tiger  or  with  one  like  a  savage ;  and  he  was 
jealous. 

"  I  don't  know,"  lisped  Dora.  "  How  can  I  tell  1  I  am  useful 
to  him  at  home,  I  suppose,  and  he  does  not  want  to  part  with 
me  ;  still  less  with  his  money." 

"  If  I  thought  it  was  anything  else  I  would  break  every  bone 
in  his  body !  "  flared  out  Sydney. 

"  What  a  silly  boy  you  are,  Syd  ! "  said  Dora.  "  Cannot  a 
person  be  fond  of  one  without  being  in  love  ?  Why,  Mr. 
Hamley  is  old  enough  to  be  my  father ! " 

"And  his  wife  to  be  your  grandmother,"  returned  Sydney. 
"  Poor,  dear,  yes  ;  quite  that,"  laughed  Dora. 
"  Which  is  just  the  reason.     It  is  you,  Dora,  who  are  silly." 
"  You  are  complimentary,"  she  pouted.    .     . 
"  And  you  are  unkind,"  he  returned. 

"  If  you  have  brought  me  out  into  the  cold,  such  a  frosty 
night  as  it  is  too,  only  to  quarrel  with  me,  I  shall  go  in  again," 
said  Dora,  suddenly  and  strangely  cross. 

He  stared  at  her.  This  was  a  new  revelation  to  him.  His 
"  little  bit  of  swansdown,"  as  he  used  to  call  her,  cross  !  his 
soft  sleek  purring  felis  femina  suddenly  ceasing  to  purr  and 
showing  her  claws !  It  was  the  beginning  of  a  new  order  of 
things  and  one  that  Sydney  Lowe  was  not  disposed  to  accept. 

"  Perhaps  you  had  better,"  he  answered  coolly.  "  And  per- 
haps I  had  better  not  come  to  Mr.  Hamley  to-morrow.'' 

"  How  cruel  you  are,  Sydney  !  "  she  cried.  "  After  having 
got  me  into  such  a  dreadful  scrape  talking  like  that ! — and 
when  you  ought  to  do  everything  in  the  world  to  get  me  out  of 
it  again — as  far  as  you  can.  It  is  too  bad  of  you  !  " 

"  But  you  said  it  was  of  no  use,  Dora."  His  tone  was  still 
that  of  an  offended  person. 


THE  POSTERN  GATE.  231 

"  And  if  I  did,  does  that  say  you  are  not  to  try  1  We  cannot 
be  worse  off  than  we  are  1 "  she  answered. 

"  Oh  yes,  we  might,"  said  Sydney  significantly. 

And  Dora  laughing,  said  :  "  Yes,  a  great  deal  worse,  if  it  all 
came  out,  and  we  were  forced  to  take  up  our  position  and  keep 
to  it.  But  Sydney,"  she  continued,  "  what  shall  we  do  if  Mr. 
Hamley  will  not  give  his  consent,  which  means  money  ? " 

"  Take  French  leave,  Dody." 

"I  think  we  have  done  that  already,"  she  said  demurely. 

"  Well,  I  am  sure  I  cannot  tell.  We  must  go  on  like  this,  I 
suppose,"  Sydney  said,  biting  his  nails  according  to  his  habit. 

"  It  is  dreadful,  dear,  is  it  not  1 "  said  Dora  ;  "  but  indeed  I 
see  nothing  else  for  it.  We  cannot  live  on  love  and  kisses, 
Syd  ;  we  must  have  a  house  to  shelter  us,  and  clothes  to  wear, 
and  food  to  eat,  and  these  are  only  to  be  had  for  money.  And 
we  cannot  earn  money — we  must  have  it  given  to  us  somehow." 

"  Then  I  will  come -to-morrow,"  said  Sydney,  taking  her  in 
his  arms  again  as  the  last  remains  of  their  little  tiff  vanished. 

"  And  be  very  sweet  and  nice,"  answered  Dora.  "  You  are 
a  dear  boy,  but  you  were  like  a  bear  to-day — just  a  bear," 
pulling  his  curly  locks  playfully. 

"  I  cannot  help  it,  Dora.  That  man  maddens  me  with  his 
vulgarity.  He  is  such  a  cad,  and  so  insolently  familiar  to  you  ! 
I  feel  as  if  I  could  thrust  my  fist  down  his  throat  when  he  calls 
you  '  Dora '  and  speaks  as  if  you  belonged  to  him — conceited 
jackass  ! " 

"  Yes,  I  know  all  that ;  but  he  has  the  key  of  the  position, 
dear,  and  there  is  no  good  to  be  got  by  making  him  angry. 
Our  policy  is  to  please  him,"  was  her  sagacious  reply. 

"Little  wisehead  !  when  you  are  always  with  me  I  shall  be 
a  paragon  of  perfection." 

Sydney  said  this  with  that  curious  mixture  of  banter  and 
affection  which  belongs  to  a  vain  man  in  love  when  the  woman 
he  loves  schools  him.  He  did  not  like  it,  but  he  liked  her,  and 
so  made  the  two  fit  in  the  best  way  he  could. 

She  chose  to  take  him  simpliciter. 

*  "  Yes,"  she  said,  with  her  hands  on  his  shoulders  ;  "  when 
you  have  me  with  you  always,  you  will  be  different  from  what 
you  are  now." 

"  What  the — what  in  the  name  of  fortune  do  you  mean  1 " 
cried  Sydney. 


232  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOTT  T)0,  T  OVE  ?  " 

"  Just  whnt  I  say,  dear.  Betting  and  drinking  and  smoking, 
and  oh  I  a  world  of  other  things — and  swearing  with  them — 
all  these  will  have  to  be  given  up  when  I  am  at  Cragfoot." 

"  Do  you  want  your  husband  to  be  a  muff  1 "  he  asked. 

"  Not  the  least  in  the  world — only  a  gentleman,"  replied 
Dora. 

"  I  must  either  quarrel  with  you  or  kiss  you  for  that  piece  of 
impertinence,"  he  said. 

"  Are  you  in  doubt  which  1 "  asked  Dora,  lifting  her  eyes 
shyly  and  lisping. 

When  Dora  stole  back  to  the  house  she  was  conscious  of 
something  unusual.  Lights  were  flashing  up-stairs,  and  a  sub- 
dued hum  of  voices  told  that  the  trim  household  was  up  and 
about,  and  that  an  event  must  have  taken  place  in  her  absence. 
If  it  should  be  that  she  had  been  missed  !  Quick  as  thought 
she  drew  off  her  socks  and  stole  across  the  hall  to  the  library, 
the  door  of  which  she  opened,  then  came  running  up  the  stairs 
rubbing  her  eyes  like  one  just  awakened.  She  saw  no  one, 
however,  until  she  came  to  her  own  room,  where  Patricia  pale 
and  tall  as  an  avenging  angel,  met  her  at  the  door. 

"  Oh,  my  goodness !  what  is  the  matter  1 "  cried  Dora. 

"Aunt  Hamley  has  been  taken  ill  and  has  been  asking  for 
you.  Why  Dora,  where  have  you  been  ?" 

"  I  went  into  the  library  to  read  a  little  bit  of  German  I 
wanted  to  translate,  and  fell  asleep.  I  am  so  cold — feel  me," 
Dora  answered,  putting  her  benumbed  hands  into  Patricia's. 

"  But  how  is  that  ?  I  went  into  the  library — I  went  into  all 
the  rooms  for  you,"  she  answered.  "  We  could  not  find  you 
anywhere ;  and,  Dora,  I  saw  something  that  I  know  now  was 
you  cross  the  shrubbery  path,  and  that  horrid  Mr.  Lowe  was 
with  you.  Oh,  I  am  so  sorry  to  say  this  to  you,"  she  con- 
tinued, as  Dora  started  and  trembled  and  looked  as  if  she  was 
going  to  faint;  "you  know  how  much  I  love  you  !  Dora,  I 
would  rather  have  done  a  wrong  thing  myself  than  that  you 
should  !  I  would  rather  have  died  than  have  seen  this ! — but 
I  cannot  live  in  falsehood,  and  what  I  know  you  must  know 
that  I  know." 

The  tears  gushed  into  her  eyes  and  her  lips  quivered, 
^or  just  a  moment  Dora  reflected ;  then  she  took  her  deter- 

Vtion. 


THE  POSTERN  GATE.  233 

"Don't  cry,"  she  said.  "  Things  look  bad,  but  they  are  not 
BO  bad  as  they  seem.  You  did  see  me  with  Sydney,  but  there 
is  no  harm  in  it — I  am  married  to  him." 

"  Married;  Dora  ! — oh,  it  cannot  be  true  !"  said  Patricia,  put- 
ting up  her  hands. 

The  thought  seemed  indelicate,  monstrous,  almost  criminal, 
sacrilegious.  A  married  woman  was  a  very  different  thing  from 
a  girl  playfellow,  even  if  she  was  seven  years  older  than  her- 
self. A  married  woman  was  a  person  infinitely  older,  infinitely 
experienced,  set  in  a  different  sphere,  with  thoughts  and  views 
and  knowledge  quite  apart  from  all  girlhood — a  person  to  ap- 
proach with  respect ;  to  wonder  at  while  her  wedding-ring  was 
yet  bright  and  fresh  ;  perhaps  to  pity ;  perhaps  to  envy ;  maybe 
to  regard  as  a  traitress  to  the  order  of  maidenhood ;  maybe  as 
the  fortunate  chosen  into  a  more  beautiful  existence — certainly 
not  to  treat  with  the  foolish  familiarity  allowed  to  one  of  her 
own  kind,  and  with  which  she  had  treated  Dora.  She  drew 
back,  shocked,  chilled,  terrified,  revolted.  She  had  loved  Dora 
so  much,  and  now  to  find  herself  so  fearfully  deceived  ! 

"Don't  be  shocked,  dear,"  said  Dora,  creeping  up  to  her 
caressingly.  "  It  was  very  wrong  and  silly,  I  dare  say ;  but 
he  made  me  do  it  when  I  was  in  London  last  autumn." 

"No,  Dora,  no  'me  can  mnke  you  commit  a  crime,"  said  Pa- 
tricia, her  head  and  eyes  still  averted. 

"  A  secret  marriage  is  not  a  crime,  dear.  Sydney  is  my  hus- 
band," said  Dora,  humbly  if  emphatically. 

"  The  marriage  may  not  be,  but  the  secrecy  is.      I  ca^ 
think  how  you  can  live  with  such  a  thing  on  your  mind,' 
tricia  answered,  still  turned  away. 

"  It  is  horrible,  but  what  can  I  do  ?    There  it  is,  and  i        / 
not  get  out  of  it ;  and  the  worst  is,  his  father  is  ruinen^    ' 
Mr.  Hamley,  I  know,  will  neither  give  me  his  consent  < 
fraction.      Colonel  Lowe  would  like  me  well  enough  K 
daughter-in-law  if  there  was  any  money  on  either  side ;  but,  as 
Sydney  says,  we  have  not  sixpence  between  us." 

"  But,  Dora,  this  must  come  to  an  end  now ;  you  must  de- 
cide on  something.  What  are  you  going  to  do  ? "  cried  Patricia, 
suddenly  looking  at  her. 

The  girl  shrugged  her  sb/^1  J          "  What  can  we  do  ? " 
said, 


234  ''  WHAT  WOULD  VOIT  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  Tell  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hatnley ;  and  if  you  don't * 

"You  will?  No,  Patricia,  you  will  not,"  she  said,  putting 
her  arms  round  her  and  looking  up  into  her  face.  "  I  know 
your  good  heart  too  well  for  that.  You  would  not  ruin  me 
you  are  not  my  enemy,  darling.  I  can  trust  you,  and  you 
would  never  be  treacherous  to  me  or  take  advantage  of  having 
found  out  my  secret." 

Tears  gathered  into  Patricia's  eyes,  and  fell  slowly  down  her 
face. 

"Would  you?"  said  Dora,  with  a  tender,  suppliant,  loving 
air ;  her  arms  still  round  the  girl's  waist,  clinging  closer  and 
closer. 

Patricia  did  not  answer.  She  made  a  faint  and  ineffectual 
show  of  unclasping  those  beseeching  arms. 

"  Patricia  1 "  the  soft  voice  pleaded  again ;  "  will  you  betray 
me  ?  If  you  do,  you  send  me  out  to  simple  beggary ;  and  I 
have  always  been  your  friend  here." 

Still  Patricia  did  not  answer.  She  had  covered  her  face  now 
and  was  sobbing. 

"  Patricia  ! " — almost  in  a  whisper — "  Patricia,  dear,  will  you 
betray  me  t  If  you  think  you  ought  you  must-— but  I  shall  be 
ruined." 

A  step,  or  rather  the  rustle  of  a  dress,  was  heard  in  the  lobby. 

"  Speak,  darling — tell  me ! " 

"No,  no;  I  will  not  betray  you  !"  said  Patricia,  turning  to 
her,  sobbing  as  if  her  heart  would  break.  She  carried  the 
sacrifice  of  her  truth  to  her  love,  and  accounted  herself  accursed 
that  her  friend  might  be  saved. 

A  light  knock  came  to  the  door. 

"  Mrs.  Hamley  is  wanting  you,  Miss  Drummond,"  said  Big- 
nold the  maid. 

"  Good  gracious,  Bignold  !  what  is  the  matter  ? "  said  dear 
Dora  through  the  closed  door,  tearing  down  her  chignon  and 
flinging  a  shawl  about  her  to  look  as  if  she  had  just  scrambled 
out  of  bed. 

"  Spasms,  miss.  Your  aunt  is  very  bad,"  said  Bignold ;  and 
then  Dora  opened  the  door  "and  slid  out  as  if  just  awakened. 

"  It  was  only  to  say  you  need  not  be  alarmed;  and  do  not 
wake  up  Patricia,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  feebly. 

"  No  dear,  I  will  not,"  Dora  answered,  kissing  her  forehead. 


THE  POSTERN   GATE.  235 

"  It  is  qmte  enough  that  I  am  unhappy.      How  sorry  I  am  to 
see  you  suffer  like  this !  " 

Mrs.  Hamley  smiled  ;  she  meant  it  tenderly,  but  the  effect 
was  ghastly — and  Mr.  Hamley,  on  the  other  side  of  the  bed, 
thought  it  so. 

"  Dear,  sweet  child  !  "  she  said  fondly.  "  What  a  comfort 
you  are  to  me,  love !  Ah  !  if  only  Patricia,  poor  girl,  was 
more  like  you  !  " 

"  She  will  improve,"  said  dear  Dora,  generously.  "  She 
means  well,  and  she  is  fond  of  you,  dear." 

"I  hope  so,"  answered  Mrs.  Hamley.  "I  have  done  my 
duty  by  her,  but  she  is  unsatisfactory." 

It  was  a  little  tragedy  in  its  way.  The  love  and  confidence 
and  blessing — the  blessing  of  Isaac  to  Jacob — bestowed  on  one 
whose  whole  life  was  a  cheat,  amiable  and  full  of  nice  tact,  but 
a  cheat  all  the  same  ;  the  reprobation  given  to  the  other  whose 
faults  Avere  those  of  truth  and  loyalty,  of  conscience,  love,  and 
integrity.  It  was  a  tragedy  in  good  sooth,  but  a  common  one. 

Then  Dora  was  dismissed  and  tbanked  for  her  prompt 
attention  ;  and  though  Mrs.  Hamley  had  herself  desired  that 
Patricia  should  not  be  disturbed,  she  had  a  sore  feeling  against 
her  all  the  same,  and  thought  she  should  have  divined  that 
something  was  wrong  and  have  awakened  of  her  own  accord. 

"  It  is  so  vulgar  and  heartless  to  sleep  so  soundly  !  "  she  said, 
peevishly,  to  Mr.  Hamley  ;  and  Mr. .  Hamley,  starting  from 
sweet  slumber  and  checking  an  incipient  snore,  replied,  "  Yes, 
it  is.  my  dear ;  but  she  is  horrid  vulgar,  you  know,  when  you've 
reckoned  her  up,  top  and  tail !  " 

On  which  Mrs.  Hamley  rebuked  him  for  disrespect  and 
maintained  that  her  niece  was  perfectly  well-bred  if  not  always 
satisfactory. 


230  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU   DO.  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER  XXIL 

WHAT  THE  DAY  BROUGHT  FORTH. 

G~ 

tT  is  not  the  people  who  do  wrong  that  are  unhappy  ;  it  is 
the  people  who  have  to  see  the  wrong  done  and  are  unable 
to  prevent  it.  Between  Dora  and  Patricia,  the  one  had  a 
conscience  void  of  offence,  the  other  was  as  miserable"  as  she 
felt  guilty.  No  secret  had  ever  come  into  her  life  before,  and 
she  dicl  not  know  what  to  do  now  that  she  had  one.  It  was  a 
terrible  secret  too  ;  not  a  mere  childish  peccadillo  of  no  great 
consequence  to  keep  or  to  tell ;  but  a  secret  that  involved  a 
daily  deception  of  the  worst  kind,  and  perhaps  a  crime  :  who 
knows  t 

Poor  Patricia  !  What  with  her  love  for  Dora  and  her  sense  of 
duty  to  her  aunt,  her  loyalty  to  her  friend  and  her  faithfulness 
to  her  guardian,  the  young  girl's  natural  excitement  at  so 
unusual  an  event  and  the  modest  maiden's  shame  at  such  a 
revelation,  the  overwhelming  consciousness  of  the  fact  which 
made  her  feel  as  if  she  should  be  obliged  to  call  aloud  to  the 
passers-by,  "  Dora  is  married !  "  on  the  one  hand,  and  as  if 
every  one  must  know  it  without  being  told  on  the  other,  her 
life  just  now  was  illimitably  wretched. 

Dora,  on  her  side,  justified  herself.  She  was  sorry  for  what 
she  had  done  ;  bub  she  regretted,  not  repented.  She  thought 
ehe  had  been  precipitate  ;  with  Lord  Merrian  at  the  Quest ;  and 
worse  than  precipitate  now  that-  Colonel  Lowe  was  ruined  and 
his  consent  or  denial  went  for  nothing.  Bub  though  she  saw 
no  way  out  of  the  coil  in  which  she  was  entangled,  she  was 
resolved  not  to  make  matters  worse  by  an  injudicious  confes- 
sion. She  was  glad  that  Patricia  knew  ;  she  could  make  her 
useful,  very  useful ;  but  she  was  quite  determined  that  come 
what  might  no  one  else  should  know,  unless  Sydney  came  into 
the  possession  of  enough  to  live  on  "  nicely."  She  had  but 
slender  hopes  that  way.  Still,  even  in  these  days,  ravens  do 
sometimes  fly  from  out  the  darkness,  and  one  might  alight  u& 


WHAT  THE  DAY  BROUGHT  FORTH.  237 

Syd.  Miracles  have  been  wrought  before  now  and  might  again, 
but  until  such  a  one  had  been  worked  in  her  favour,  she  was 
resolved  to  remain  the  dove  in  the  ark  of  Abbey  Holme,  and  to 
enjoy  the  warmth  and  the  wine,  the  soft  carpets  and  the  dainty 
attire,  rather  than  go  with  her  young  husband  into  love  and 
penury. 

Penury  was  by  no  means  to  trje  taste  of  pretty  Dora  Drummond, 
To  her  way  of  thinking  love  in  a  cotton  gown,  with  only  cold 
mutton  for  dinner,  was  far  more  frightful  than  hate  in  velvet 
and  contempt  with  diamonds  in  the  hair.  She  would  rather 
have  the  velvet  and  the  diamonds  than  the  love  and  the 
cold  mutton;  and  Abbey  Holme,  with  its  subservience  of  habit 
and  suppression  of  will — and  the  luxury  and  well-being  that 
had  become  her  second  nature  included — was  to  be  preferred 
to  Sydney  Lowe  ruined.  She  liked  Sydney's  love  well 
enough,  and  she  liked  the  excitement  of  their  stolen  meet- 
ings ;  they  gave  her  a  sweet  sense  of  secret  power  and  freedom 
that  compensated  for  many  disagreeables  ;  but  she  would 
rather  renounce  the  whole  thing,  tleny  her  marriage  now 
and  for  ever  and  become  a  second  Lady  Audley  or  Aurora 
Floyd,  than  keep  to  her  bargain  if  it  was  for  worse  and  not  for 
better.  And  she  believed  that  Sydney  dreaded  poverty 
even  with  love  at  its  back,  just  as  much  as  she  did  herself; 
and  that  if  occasion  offered  she  could  make  him  amenable  to 
reason,  and  induce  him  to  renounce  and  deny  in  concert. 

Meanwhile,  she  slept  like  a  child  and  woke  like  a  rose,  and 
took  care  of  her  eyes  and  complexion  as  other  people  take  care 
of  their  consciences  and  their  love. 

She  came  down  to  breakfast  the  next  day  sweet,  fresh,  deli- 
cate, dainty,  and  exactly  punctual  as  ever.  She  inquired  ten- 
derly of  Mrs.  Hamley  how  she  was,  when  she  came  in  just  the 
prescribed  three  minutes  after  her ;  inquired  tenderly  and  de- 
votedly, as  if  no  graver  care,  no  heavier  weight  oppressed  her 
than  the  condition  of  an  elderly  woman's  digestion.  For  Mrs. 
Hamley  being  of  the  grim  order  had  struggled  manfully  with 
the  remains  of  her  last  night's  indisposition,  and  had  straight- 
ened herself  courageously  for  her  daily  duties,  appearing  at  the 
head  of  the  table,  upright,  lady-like,  well-dressed,  well-powdered, 
and  with  all  her  addenda  and  succodanea  as  accurately  adjusted 
as  ever,  even  to  the  hair  restorer  "  which  was  not  a  dye,"  but 


238  u  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  t)O,  LOVE  ?  " 

which  nevertheless  made  grey  hair  brown  at  odd  moments,  and 
hung  a  veil  before  the  hour-glass  of  Time  so  that  its  spent  sand 
should  not  be  seen. 

Presently  Patricia  came  in.  She  had  kept  awake  half  the 
night,  now  listening  to  hear  if  her  aunt  was  astir  and  needing 
help — how  it  all  reminded  her  of  her  dear  uncle  ! — now  fret- 
ting about  Dora,  and  making  her  head  ache  between  fear  and 
pity,  dread  and  horror  ;  and  thus  had  fallen  asleep  only  when 
far  into  the  morning — the  "  mouth  of  the  morning,"  as  the  old 
Gaelic  has  it.  Consequently  she  had  been  roused  with  difficulty, 
and  had  dressed  herself  hurriedly;  with  the  inevitable  result. 

She  came  in  when  prayers  were  over;  and  this  was  her  first 
offence.  For  Mrs.  Haanley  held  by  family  prayers.  They  were 
respectable  and  might  do  the  servants  good,  and  they  made 
the  proper  kind  of  roll-call  whereby  she  might  be  sure  of  her 
domestic  forces ;  and  she  was  implacable  when  anyone  was 
missing.  And  when  Patricia  did  come  in  she  looked  tumbled 
and  disturbed  ;  her  hair  was  not  sufficiently  smooth,  her  brooch 
was  awry,  she  had  forgotten  her  cuffs,  and  she  had  no  bov,  to 
her  band.  And  all  these  misdemeanors  together  filled  up  the 
measure  till  it  overflowed. 

"  Are  you  better,  aunty  dear  1 "  she  said  eagerly  from  the 
door,>  so  soon  as  she  had  opened  it. 

Mrs.  Hamley  did  not  like  people  to  speak  to  her  from  a  dis- 
tance, nor  for  the  matter  of  that  too  near.  Her  heaving  was 
just  in  that  woolly  stage  when  there  is  special  need  of  distinct- 
ness ;  but  it  was  an  unpardonable  offence  to  let  the  need  be  seen. 

"  Will  you  have  the  kindness  not  to  speak  to  me  at  that  dis- 
tance, and  not  to  talk  so  fast  ? "  said  Aunt  Hamley  stiffly. 

Patricia  went  up  to  her.  "Are  you  better  this  morning, 
dear  ? "  she  asked  again  in  her  loud,  clear  voice. 

"  Good  gracious,  child  !  you  are  enough  to  deafen  one  ! "  said 
Mrs.  Hamley  peevishly,  putting  her  hands  over  her  ears. 
"  Yes,  I  am,  I  am  obliged  to  you.  Though  I  am  sure  I  do  not 
know  why  you  should  ask,"  she  added  with  an  offended  kind 
of  sneer.  "  You  were  not  very  much  interested  in  my  condi- 
tion last  night.  I  might  have  died,  for  anything  you  knew  or 
cared.  Sleeping  through  all  that  noise  like  a  tired  milkmaid  1 
The  place  might  be  carried  away,  and  you  would  not  hear  I " 

"  But  I  did  hear  and  was  not  asleep,"  said  Patricia. 


WHAT  THE  DAY  BROtTGHT  FORTH.  539 

"  And  if  you  knew  that  I  was  so  ill  why  did  you  not  have 
the  grace  to  come  and  see  me  ? "  asked  Mrs.  Hamley  sharply. 

"  Bignold  would  not  let  me  go  into  your  room,"  she  said. 

"And  Bignold  was  quite  right,"  returned  Mrs.  Hamley  with 
illogical  severity.  "  But  you  might  have  gone  to  Dora.  Dora 
came  to  me ;  and  you  might  at  least  have  sent  your  love  and 
duty  by  her,  and  asked  to  know  if  you  could  be  of  any  use." 

"  Dora "  began  Patricia ;  when  Dora  raised  her  sweet 

eyes,  and  said  to  Patricia — 

"  I  did  not  like  to  disturb  you,  dear ;  though  I  felt  sure  you 
would  want  to  know  if  you  were  awake.  But  I  thought  it  a 
pity  to  make  you  anxious  for  nothing,  as  you  could  not  help. 
I  hops  I  did  no  wrong.  If  I  did,  you  must  forgive  me ;  bat  I 
acted  for  the  best.  So  you  see," — gracefully  to  Mrs.  Hamley, 
and  with  a  generous  impulse  shining  through  her  timidity — 
"  if  any  one  is  to  blame  it  is  I ;  but  I  acted  for  the  best." 

"  You  always  do,  my  love,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  kindly,  and 
Mr.  Hamley  wagged  his  head  approvingly. 

Patricia  flushed  till  the  tears  were  forced  into  her  eyes.  Her 
position  was  becoming  unbearable.  More  as  a  relief  to  her 
own  feelings  than  because  she  thought  she  would  be  welcome, 
she  put  her  arms  around  her  aunt,  and  said  affectionately — 

"  You  must  not  think  m»  unfeeling,  dear,  because  I  was  kept 
out.  If  you  only  knew,  aunty,  how  sorry  I  was,  and  how  glad 
I  am  to  see  you  in  your  old  place  to-day  !" 

"There  !  that  will  do,  my  dear  !"  said  Aunt  Hamley  throw- 
ing her  off  by  a  sudden  twist.  '"  You  are  late  enough  as  it  is. 
Go  and  sit  down,  and  eat  your  breakfast  like  a  lady.  I  hate 
such  disorderly  ways  ! " 

She  could  never  resist  the  temptation  of  snubbing  Patricia. 
She  had  that  odd  self -contradictory  feeling  for  her  which  made 
her  impatient  that  she  was  not  this  and  that  which  she  was  not, 
and  more  impatient  still  when  she  did  as  she  had  desired.  If 
the  girl  left  her  alone,  she  neglected  her ;  if  she  paid  her  atteiv 
tion,  she  fussed  her;  whatever  she  did  was  wrong,  and  she  was 
all  that  she  ought  not  to  be.  Her  image  was  reflected  ia  a 
crooked  mirror  where  not  a  line  was  straight  nor  a  form  beauti- 
ful. 

So  Patricia  went  to  her  place ;  passing  by  Dora,  whom  she 
kissed  with  a  new  sensation  and  bashfully,  as  if  she  had  beeD 


240  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

kissing  Sydney  Lowe  by  implication  ;  and  then  to  Mr.  Hamley, 
with  her  frank  eyes  a  little  clouded,  and  her  head  generally 
borne  so  straight,  a  little  drooped  because  of  that  mystery  she 
had  penetrated. 

Mr.  Hamley  rose  pompously,  shook  hands  with  her  noisily, 
and  asked  her  to  have  everything  on  the  table  in  a  hurried 
heaped-up  way,  as  if  they  were  Israelites  at  the  Passover,  eating 
with  their  loins  girded  for  a  journey  and  in  haste.  It  was  his 
way  of  rebuke ;  and  effectual.  All  these  were  but  small  things 
taken  separately,  and  if  they  came  only  on  occasions,  but  all  at 
once,  and  continually  occurring,  they  were  enough  to  sadden  a 
young  girl  of  even  as  much  cheerful  courage  as  Patricia.  So  the 
morning  was  melancholy  for  her ;  and  what  with  the  burden  of 
her  secret  and  the  sore  of  her  snubbing  she  was  wretched 
enough,  and  found  herself  more  than  once  wondering  when 
Gordon  Frere  would  be  at  home  again,  that  her  life  might  take 
back  its  old  brightness  and  freedom  and  love  :  more  than  once 
wishing  that,  until  this  time  came,  she  might  be  allowed  to 
find  a  home  with  her  friends  at  the  Hollies.  If  only  this  might 
be,  how  happy  she  would  be  then,  when  now  she  was  so  miser- 
able! 

Just  after  luncheon  Mr.  Sydney  Lowe  called.  He  asked  for 
Mr.  Hamley,  and  by  his  own  desire  was  shown  into  the  library 
where  the  master  sat  surrounded  by  gorgeously-bound  books  he 
never  read,  and  could  not  have  understood  if  he  had  ;  gorge- 
ously-bound books  interspersed  with  lengths  of  lettered  dummies 
cleverly  made  by  the  carpenter,  and  quite  as  valuable  to  Mr. 
Hamley  as  the  realities.  Indeed,  being  more  ingenious,  they 
were  more  valuable. 

The  interview  was  not  long.  Sydney  asked  permission  to 
address  Miss  Drummond  ;  and  Mr.  Hamley  replied  cheerfully, 
— with  all  his  heart,  if  he  could  satisfy  him  about  ways  and 
means.  His  present  income  ?  his  future  expectations  ?  prosaic 
things  no  doubt,  but  even  a  young  gentleman  in  love  must 
remember  that  a  butcher  would  demand  payment  once  a  year 
at  least,  and  it  was  as  well  to  be  provided  with  the  means  be- 
forehand. 

To  all  this  Sydney  was  charmingly  reasonable.  He  was  quite 
prepared  to  answer  Mr.  Hamley's  questions,  and  he  believed 
satisi'actorily.  He  mentioned  Cragfoot  with  a  flourish ;  re- 


WHAT  THE  DAY  BROUGHT  FORTH.  241 

minded  Mr.  Hamley  that  he  was  his  father's  heir  and  only 
child,  and  that  his  mother's  jointure  would  come  to  him  at  her 
death.  His  mother,  Mr.  Hamley  might  be  aware,  was  Lady 
Aune  Graham's  daughter,  and  his  father's  name  spoke  for 
itself. 

"  It  all  sounds  quite  first-rate,"  said  Mr.  Hamley;  "  but" — 
slowly,  as  if  he  was  only  reflecting ;  for  he  could  Siford  to  be 
gracious  to-day — "  I  happen  to  know  that  Cragfoot  is  mort- 
gaged up  to  the  chimney-pots,  and  that  your  mother's  inalien- 
able jointure  is  two  hundred  a  year,  allowed  by  your  father. 
Where  the  sixty  thousand  pounds  she  brought  loose  in  her 
pocket  has  gone  is  more  than  I  can  tell;  you  had  better  ask 
your  father;  and  if  he  tells  you,  pass  the  information  on.  It 
may  be  useful.  I  am  afraid  Mr.  Lowe,  sir,  if  you  cannot  show 
a  better  invoice  than  this,  it  will  be  no  go  for  you." 

Sydney  set  his  teeth.  The  two  men  had  grappled,  but  they 
were  still  making  a  feint  of  courtesy. 

"  I  know  that  my  father  is  in  a  little  temporary  embarrass- 
ment which  he  will  soon  overcome,"  said  Sydney. 

"  When  he  has  overcome  it,  I  shall  be  happy  to  treat  with 
you  fvgain,"  answered  Mr.  Hamley,  politely.  "  Until  then  under- 
stand, that  I  take  it  on  myself  as  a  duty  not  to  allow  any 
engagement  between  you  and  Miss  Drutnmond.  Miss  Drum- 
mond  has  been  brought  up  quite  the  lady,  and  if  ever  she 
marries,  she  must  marry  where  she  will  be  kept  the  lady  still." 

"  I  hope,  Mr.  Hamley,  you  do  not  think  she  would  forfeit  her 
position  as  a  gentlewoman  in  marrying  me  1"  said  Sydney  with 
a  flash  of  the  old  vicious  passion. 

"  Oh,  dear  me,  no!  not  at  all,  sir.  Still,  you  have  not  means 
enough  to  keep  her  in  what  I  call  the  lap  of  luxury,  as  she  is 
now.  And  I  would  not  bestow  her  hand  on  any  one  who  could 
not  put  down  pound  for  pound  with  me." 

"  Are  the  lady's  own  inclinations  to  go  for  nothing  ? "  said 
Sydney  warmly. 

"  They  may  go  for  everything,  Mr.  Lowe.  I  have  no  legal 
right  over  Miss  Drumraond.  If  she  likes  she  can  walk  out  of 
this  house  arm-in-arm  with  you  or  my  groom,  and  marry  to- 
>\v  if  it  pleases  her.  But  if  she  does,  she  and  her  husband 
will  never  see  a  farthing  of  my  money ;  and  I  think  I  know  her 
too  well  to  be  afraid  of  her." 


242          ..  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ? " 

"  If  you  call  that  being  good  to  a  girl  you  profess  to  love  like 
a  daughter,  I  do  not ! "  said  Sydney  angrily. 

Mr.  Hamley  raised  his  eyes,  and  looked  at  him  steadily. 

"  I  didn't  know  that  my  being  bad  or  good  to  the  girl  was 
part  of  the  business  between  us,"  he  said.  "  And  what's  more, 
I  don't  care  a  snuff  whether  you  think  me  one  or  t'other.  The 
business  is,  What  money  have  you  got  to  marry  on  1  and  it's 
my  say — Not  enough." 

"  And  I  say  I  have,  if  you  will  give  a  sufficient  income  to  the 
girl  yom  have  adopted  as  your  daughter." 

Mr.  Hamley  burst  into  a  loud  harsh  laugh. 

"  Now  that  we've  cracked  the  nut  we've  come  to  the  kernel," 
he  said.  "  Teach  your  grandmother  !  Not  a  halfpenny,  Mr. 
Lowe  !  If  you  have  her,  you  must  take  her  in  her  shift ;  unless 
you  can  give  her  the  silk  gown  to  cover  her.  I  tell  you  again, 
I'll' lay  down  pound  for  pound  with  you,  and  no  man  can  say 
fairer  ;  but  I'll  not  give  her  without  an  equivalent." 

"  The  love  of  a  gentleman  counts  for  something,"  said  Sydney 
disdainfully. 

Mr.  Hamley  laughed  even  more  disdainfully. 

"  Not  on  my  ship,"  he  said.  "  I'm  a  self-made  man  myself, 
and  know  what's  what  pretty  well  by  now.  I'd  rather  Miss 
Drummond  married  a  man  as  could  keep  her  as  she  ought  to 
be  kept,  than  a  man  as  called  himself  a  gentleman,  and  hadn't 
a  blessed  penny  to  play  chuck-farthing  with  ! " 

"  You  speak  as  if  I  was  a  beggar,  Mr.  Hamley  ! "  said  Sydney, 
angrily. 

"  Do  It"  he  answered  with  supreme  coolness.  "  The  remedy 
is  in  your  own  hands  if  I  do.  Show  me  Cragfoot  without  a 
mortgage  on  it,  and  a  good  thirty  thousand  to  the  back  of  it, 
and  then  I'll  gay  my  service  to  you.  But,"  he  added,  suddenly 
changing  from  coolness  to  insolence,  "  I'm  not  a  going  to  give 
my  money  to  Bet  you  and  your  father  on  your  legs  again,  with 
Miss  Drummond  forsooth  as  the  decoy  duck.  Feather  your 
own  nest  by  your  honest  industry,  as  I  have  feathered  mine, 
and  then  you  can  ask  a  gentleman  for  a  lady's  hand  like  a 
gentleman  yourself,  and  not  like  a  sneak  and  a  swindler.  No 
sir,  not  if  I  know  it !  "  he  cried,  as  Sydney  caught  up  a  heavy 
ebony  ruler,  and  Mr.  Hamley  seized  his  arms  just  in  time. 

"  You  infernal  blackguard  ! "  exclaimed  Sydney  struggling  in 
his  grasp  and  hitting  out  savagely. 


WHAT  THE   DAY  BROUGHT  FORTH.  243 

Mr.  Hamley  held  him  off  with  one  hand,  and  rang  the  bell 
violently  with  the  other.  The  servant  came  at  the  instant  from 
the  hall. 

"  Show  Mr.  Lowe  the  door,  John,"  said  the  master  of  the 
house,  releasing  him.  "  And  if  he  ventures  to  show  his  face 
in  here  again  set  the  dogs  at  him.  There  !  "  he  said,  rubbing 
his  hands  as  Sydney,  with  a  horrible  imprecation,  was  ushered 
out  ot  the  room,  "  that's  the  best  day's  work  I  ever  did  in  my 
life  !  I  have  paid  off  old  scores  with  interest,  and  I  feel  twice 
the  man  I  did  for  it.  He  have  Dora  ?  No,  not  if  he  licked 
my  foot  for  her,  and  I  broke  the  whole  boiling  of  them — as  I 
willl" 


"WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER  XXIIL 

CONSENTING  WITH  SINNERS. 

IVING  himself  time  to  cool  down  a  little,  for  he  was 
flushed  and  rudely  excited,  into  the  drawing-room  pre- 
sently walked  Mr.  Hamley,  with  a  high-handed  master- 
ful air,  even  more  self-assertive  and  swaggering  than  usual.  He 
found  the  ladies  in  their  accustomed  places  and  occupied  in 
their  accustomed  work ;  that  is,  Mrs.  Hamley  was  at  one  side 
of  the  fire  knitting  a  coloured  couvre-pied,  Dora  was  at  the 
other  doing  dainty  modern  point,  each  with  her  own  special 
little  velvet  table  by  her  side,  and  Patricia  was  in  the  bay  of 
the  window,  at  the  remotest  point,  reading,  or  rather  seeming 
to  read,  but  in  reality  thinking  of  what  she  knew.  The  master 
surveyed  his  feminine  belongings  graciously.  He  felt  grand 
•and  Eastern  as  he  looked  at  them. 

"  I  have  had  a  visit,  ladies,  that  will  interest  you  like  one  of 
Mr.  Mudie's  green  things  there,"  he  began. . 

They  all  looked  up  ;  dear  Dora  smiled  in  her  gentle  way. 

"  A  love  story,"  he  continued. 

He  was  doling  out  his  news  by  bits ;  it  was  too  precious  to 
give  entire  and  all  at  once. 

"Indeed ! " 

This  was  Dora's  exclamation ;  she  was  the  only  one  who 
spoke. 

"  Indeed  1  Yes,  it  is  indeed,  I  think.  I  have  been  well 
amazed,  I  can  tell  you.  A  young  man  has  just  been  here  ask- 
ing permission  to  pay  his  addresses  to  one  of  you  two  young 
ladies.  There  now,  the  cat's  out." 

"  But  to  which  of  us  ?  "  asked  Dora,  gaily. 

"Well,  which  ?     Guess." 
•  "  Patricia,"  laughed  Dora ;  "  she  is  the  youngest." 

Her  words  made  the  girl  start  as  if  she  had  been  touched  by 
a  hot  iron.  It  was  partly  sacrilege,  and  partly  an  insulfc. 

"  What  a  shame  ! "  she  said,  hotly. 


CONSENTING  WITH  SINNERS.  245 

"  Calm  yourself,  my  dear ;  so,  so  !  be  calm,  I  beg !  '*  said 
Mr.  Hamley,  in  an  aggravating  stable  kind  of  voice.  "  Don't 
get  so  excited  about  nothing.  It  was  not  you ;  it  was  Miss 
Drummond." 

"  Me  !  "  cried  Dora,  arching  her  eyebrows.  "  What  an 
idea!" 

"  So  I  said,  but  I  treated  him  as  civil  as  if  he  had  been  a 
prince  ;  that  I  did  !  I  asked  him  his  means,  as  one  gentleman 
to  another,  and  he  said,  '  Cragfoot.'  Now  you  know  him." 

"  Sydney  Lowe  1 "  said  Dora,  as  if  she  had  been  guessing  a 
riddle. 

"  You  might  have  made  a  worse  shot,"  answered  Mr.  Hamley. 

"  And  Cragfoot  is  a  lovely  place,  and  Mr.  Lowe  comes  of  a 
good  family,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  crossly. 

She  had  not  the  slightest  desire  that  Dora  should  marry 
Sydney,  but  she  did  Hot  like  the  whole  thing  to  be  regulated 
without  her  voice  making  itself  heard  in  the  councils. 

"I  grant  you,  Lady,"  Mr.  Hamley  answered,  pompously. 
"  Of  the  young  man  himself  I  will  say  nothing ;  he  is  not  my 
mark  exactly  ;  but  Cragfoot  would  not  be  bad  even  for  a  young 
lady  out  of  Abbey  Holme,  if  it  was  Cragfoot,  and  not  as  one 
may  say  a  mere  shell  with  a  name  tacked  to  it.  I  have  reason 
to  know  that  it  is  mortgaged  body  and  bones,  and  that  the 
colonel  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  a  bankrupt.  What  he  and 
that  precious  son  of  his  have  would  not  keep  Miss  Drummond 
in  shoe-leather.  Was  I  wrong,  then,  to  refuse  him  her  hand  ]  " 

"How  can  you  ask  such  a  silly  question?"  said  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley  tartly.  "  How  could  the  child  marry  a  young  man  without 
any  money  to  live  on  ?  It  was  an  insult  to  ask  for  her." 

"  Was  I  wrong,  Dora  1 "  he  continued,  turning  "to  Dora  and 
watching  her  narrowly. 

"  Certainly  not,"  she  said  steadily.  "  As  dear  Mrs.  Haiuley 
says,  I  cannot  live  on  nothing." 

"  Is  this  your  only  reason  ? "  he  asked  again. 

"  Why,  yes,"  she  answered  lightly. 

"  You  would  not  have  liked  it  if  he  could  have  laid  down  a 
clean  bill?  You  are  not  what  is  called  'in  love'  with  him1!" 

Patricia's  heart  stood  still.  By  her  face  it-  would  have  seemed 
as  if  her  own  love,  not  Dora's,  rested  on  .the  answer. 


246  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO.  LOVE  "  " 

Dora  raised  her  eyes.  "  In  love  with  him  t  No ! "  she  said, 
with  the  faintest  little  movement  of  her  round  shoulders. 

"And  at  those  times  when  he  has  tried  to  make  himself 
agreeable  to  you,  you  have  held  him  off  ? "  again  asked  Mr. 
Hamley,  still  searching  her  face. 

"  Yes,  indeed  I  have,"  Dora  answered,  her  sweet  face  the 
very  ideal  of  frankness  if  also  of  tender  modesty.  "  I  have 
never  encouraged  him ;  he  knows  that." 

Patricia  gave  a  shuddering  kind  of  gasp  and  dashed  from 
the  room  like  a  storm  passing  through  it.  This  was  consenting 
with  sinners  indeed  ;  and  she  staggered  under  the  burden  of  her 
cross.  Her  whole  nature  revolted  at  the  false  position  in  which 
she  stood,  and  the  sin  to  which  she  was  so  unwillingly  a  party. 
She  felt  that  she  must  get  out  of  the  house,  shake  off  the  in- 
fluence of  this  strange,  cold,  lying  life,  else  she  should  suffocate 
and  die.  She  ran  up-stairs  and  locked  herself  in  her  own  room, 
and  bathed  her  face  in  cold  water  to  get  rid  of  a  kind  of  cob- 
web that  seemed  to  have  come  before  her  eyes,.  Her  pulses 
were  beating  tumultuously,  but  she  was  trembling  as  if  in  an 
ague-fit.  Heat  and  cold,  poverty  and  hunger,  she  could  have 
borne,  and  cheerfully ;  but  this  continual  presence  of  evil  to 
which  she  must  give  a  tacit  consent,  this  awful  confusion  of 
thoughts  and  feelings,  this  terrible  uncertainty  of  duties,  this 
love  without  honour,  this  pity  without  sympathy  that  she  felt 
for  Dora,  nearly  maddened  her.  She  was  like  one  carried  away 
in  a  torrent  where  was  no  help  and  no  hope. 

She  flung  herself  on  her  knees  and  laid  out  her  sorrows  in 
passionate  prayer ;  but  no  angel  came  down  to  tell  her  what 
she  ought  to  do,  and  though  her  prayer  carried  the  blessing  of 
present  soothing  with  it,  it  brought  no  solution  of  her  difficul- 
ties. 

Flushed,  yet  still  with  this  ague-like  trembling  en  her,  she 
dressed  herself  for  a  walk  and  went  back  into  the  drawing-room. 
She  wanted  to  get  out  of  the  house,  first  of  all  things,  and  she 
wanted  to  go  down  to  the  Hollies.  If  she  could  find  peace  any- 
where, it  would  be  there. 

"  I  am  so  feverish,  dear  aunt ;  do  let  me  go  out  for  a  little 
while  ? "  she  pleaded  in  answer  to  Mrs.  Hamley's  look  of  as- 
tonished rebuke. 
Dora  rose  from  her  seat  and  went  up  to  her  caressingly. 


CONSENTING  WITH   SINNERS.    -  247 

Patricia  trembled  more  tlun  ever,  and  turned  a\vay  he '  head. 
Acting,  which  was  as  easy  as  breathing  to  the  one,  which  was 
indeed  a  pleasant  pastime,  was  agony  to  the  other ;  and  having 
to  control  herself  at  this  moment  was  an  added  pain  she  felt 
Dora  might  have  spared  her. 

"  You  are  not  looking  well,  dear,"  said  Dora  kindly.  "  How 
I  wish  I  was  as  strong  as  you  and  able  to  face  the  cold  as  you 
do  !  I  would  go  with  you."  In  a  whisper  she  said  plead- 
ingly, "Do  not  think  harshly  of  me,  dear!  " 

''  Please  may  I  go,  aunt  1  "  said  Patricia,  not  answering  Dora, 
not  returning  the  pressure  of  her  hand — she  whose  frank  love 
had  hitherto  leapt  so  gladly  to  meet  the  faintest  sign  of  tender- 
ness her  friend  had  ever  shown  ;  but  her  own  heart  only  knew 
how  hard  it  was  to  steel  herself  against  that  pleading  voice,  how 
desperate  the  pain  to  have  to  judge  harshly  where  she  loved  so 
warmly ! 

Mrs.  Hamley  was  vexed  by  her  request.  She  disliked  being 
made  a  fuss  with  when  she  was  ill,  but  she  liked  to  be  the  cen- 
tral consideration  of  the  house — to  have  her  little  court  stand- 
ing at  respectful  attention,  waiting  on  Providence  and  her  hu- 
mour, watching  for  time  and  her  pleasure.  It  seemed  to  her 
the  most  heartless,  the  most  shameless  thing  that  could  have 
happened ;  but  she  said,  "  Certainly,  Patricia,  you  can  go," 
coldly,  with  the  feeling  of  a  martyr  generously  sacrificing  her 
rights  for  another's  pleasure. 

"  I  will  be  back  before  dark,"  said  Patricia. 

"May  I  ask  where  you  are  going? — or  am  I  presuming  too 
much  on  my  position  as  your  guardian  and  the  mistress  of  the 
house  1 "  said  Mrs.  Hamley  with  cold  formality. 

" I  want  to  go  down  to  the  Hollies,"  answered  Patricia.  "I 
want  to  see  Miss  Fletcher." 

"  May  I  suggest,  Patricia;  that  this  continual  going  to  the 
Hollies  is  rather  odd  and  not  very  delicate  1 "  said  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley,  still  in  the  same  cold  and  formal  manner. 

"  How  not  delicate  ? "  asked  Patricia.  "  Miss  Fletcher  wishes 
me  to  go.  I  do  not  force  myself  on  her." 

Mrs.  Hamley  glanced  up  at  her  contemptuously  ;  she  was 
about  to  say — "Dr.  Fletcher  is  an  unmarried  man  1"  but  when 
she  saw  the  child-like  face  that  looked  down  with  frank  inquiry 
into  hers,  the  better  part  of  her  womanhood -prevailed  over  tfre 


248  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

•worse  and  she  conquered  her  spite  for  the  sake  of  her  involun- 
tary reverence.  Undoubtedly  Patricia  was  a  fool,  she  thought ; 
but  she  was  an  innocent  one,  and  it  was  not  for  her  to  enlighten 
her. 

"  Go,  if  you  like,"  she  said  crossly.  "  What  you  and  Ca- 
therine Fletcher  can  find  to  say  to  each  other  is  more  than  I 
can  make  out.  You  are  the  dullest  companion  possible  at 
home.  I  suppose,  like  many  other  people,  you.  reserve  your 
liveliness  for  strangers  and  give  your  home  only  your  ill  tem- 
per." 

At  that  moment  the  door-bell  rang,  and  Lord  Merrian  and 
Dr.  Fletcher  were  announced.  They  had  met  at  the  lodge- 
gate,  the  one  riding,  the  other  walking,  and  so  had  come  up 
the  drive  together.  As  if  by  magic  Mrs.  Hamley's  sour  face 
changed  its  expression  and  became  placid  and  well-bred.  She 
could  have  dispensed  with  the  doctor;  but  the  coming  of  the 
young  lord  so  soon  after  their  own  call  gratified  her  immensely. 
It  must  have  done  so  to  have  made  her  so  suddenly  amiable. 

"  I  hope  you  do  not  consider  me  intrusive,"  said  Lord  Mer- 
rian with  his  fine  smile  and  gracious  manner  ;  "  but  I  fancy 
this  belongs  to  one  of  you  ladies,  and  as  I  was  riding  past  I 
undertook  to  deliver  it  for  my  mother ;  else,"  smiling  again — 
and  what  a  pleasant  smile  it  was — "  I  should  scarcely  have 
ventured  on  such  an  invasion." 

It  was  a  mere  nothing  that  he  gave  to  Mrs.  Ifamley,  wrap 
ped  up  in  a  little  tissue  paper  parcel — a  rather  tumbled  crape 
bow,  one  of  the  mysteries  of  Patricia's  dress  that,  as  she  phrased 
it,  had  gone  adrift  in  the  drawing-room  at  the  Quest.  It  was 
not  an  unusual  thing  for  Patricia's  ornamental  trimmings  to 
go  adrift,  and  Mrs.  Hamley  often  found  it  necessary  to  lecture 
her  on  the  righteousness  of  needle  and  thread,  and  the  value 
of  that  stitch  in  time  which  saves  nine.  This  time,  however, 
she  condoned  the  offence  for  the  sake  of  the  visit  it  had  occa- 
sioned, and  handed  it  over  to  her  niece  witk  a  smile  that  was 
more  friendly  and  compassionate  than  usual. 

Patricia  blushed,  of  course,  when  she  received  her  truant 
property,  and  looked  very  pretty,  even  through  all  her  trouble 
of  mind  ;  but  she  was  not  disposed  to  take  any  share  in  the 
conversation  to-day,  or  to  profit  by  Lord  Merrian 's  viait  in  any 
way,  so  drew  a  little  apart  aud  sat  down  on  a  sofa  standing 


CONSENTING  WITH  SINNERS.  249 

diagonally  like  a  barricade  between  the  table  and  the  window, 
by  which  Dora  was  left  mistress  of  the  situation ;  and  as  Lord 
Merrian  could  not  have  indulged  in  any  of  the  heroics  of  yes- 
terday, with.so  many  critical  ears  to  listen  to  him,  he  contented 
himself  with  the  small  talk  of  ordinary  society,  which  suited 
"  the  fair  girl "  better,  and  showed  her  to  advantage. 

In  the  midst  of  an  animated  monologue  on  the  music  of  the 
future,  of  which  neither  he  nor  his  audience  knew  more  than 
that  its  high  priest  was  Richard  Wagner  and  that  it  was  exces- 
sively odd,  Henry  Fletcher  went  over  to  Patricia  in  his  sloping, 
lazy  way,  and  subsided  on  the  sofa  by  her. 

"  Are  you  going  out  or  coming  in  1 "  he  asked,  glancing  a.t 
her  hat  and  jacket.  • 

"Going  out,"  said  Patricia.  Then  in  a  hurried  unhappy 
voice  she  added :  "  I  so  much  wish  to  see  your  sister  to-day  ;  I 
have  just  asked  Aunt  Hamley  if  I  can  go,  and  she  says  I  may. 
May  I  go  with  you  ? " 

His  thin,  brown,  leathery  face  lighted  up,  and  he  looked 
quite  young  because  so  glad.  . 

"  Certainly,"  he  said ;  "  we  shall  be  delighted.  My  sister 
was  speaking  of  you  this  morning  and  saying  that  she  wanted 
to  see  you  again.  Indeed  I  called  now  with  a  message  from 
her,  hoping  to  induce  you  to  come." 

"  How  good  you  are  ! "  said  Patricia,  lifting  her  eyes  grate- 
fully to  his.  "  I  will  tell  aunty,  then ;  and  as  she  said  I  might 
go,  whenever  you  like  I  am  ready." 

"  Perhaps  I  had  better  give  her  my  sister's  message,"  he 
answered  smiling.  "  Mrs.  Hamley  is  particular,  and  she  may 
think  I  ought  to  do  my  business  selon  Us  convenances.  What 
an  old  father  she  thinks  me ! — just  an  umbrella  !"  he  thought 
to  himself  with  half  a  sigh.  "  And  yet  she  is  right ;  I  am  only 
an  old  father  to  her." 

The  request,  made  with  that  quiet  taking-it-for-granted 
which  so  often  gets  what  it  asks,  was  successful,  thbugh  Mrs. 
Hamley  was  not  over  well  pleased  with  Dr.  Fletcher  or  his 
object.  She  was  indeed  anything  but  pleased  that  her  niece 
should  leave  at  all  during  Lord  Merrian's  visit,  and  more  espe- 
cially was  she  annoyed  that  she  should  leave  in  company  with 
Dr.  Fletcher.  But  the  Fletchers  were  people  who  had  a  pecu- 
liar [power  over  Mrs.  Hamley ;  she  was  always  finding  fault 


250  "  AVH AT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

with  them  behind-backs,  but  to  their  faces  she  did  not  resist 
them.  She  considered  the  one  the  son  of  perdition  and  the 
other  the  daughter  of  folly ;  nevertheless,  strong  in  her  own 
righteousness  and  wisdom  as  she  was,  she  let  them  have  their 
will  of  her  when  they  chose  to  ask  it,  and  while  she  affected 
to  contemn  did  really  respect  them  too  much  to  gainsay  them. 
As  now,  when  she  would  rather  have  kept  her  niece  to  look 
beautiful  in  the  eyes  of  the  future  Earl  of  Dovedale,  but  felt 
herself  constrained  to  let  her  depart  with  Henry  Fletcher 
because  he  had  begged  for  her  in  the  name  of  her  sister,  and 
had  come  up  to  carry  her  off. 

So  Patricia  went  with  her  friend,  leaving  Lord  Merrian 
secretly  disgusted  and  sore  with  the  feeling  of  having  been 
"  sold ; "  but  still  discussing  the  music  of  the  future,  and  the 
respective  merits  of  Wagner  and  Verdi,  as  if  he  really  enjoyed 
the  conversation.  He  might  have  done  so  had  not  his  interest 
been  forestalled ;  for  Dora  was  putting  out  all  her  little  coquet- 
ries and  fascinations  with  supreme  indifference  to  the  fact  that 
another  man  called  her  wife,  and  that  how  much  soever  she 
might  make  Lord  Merrian  admire  her,  he  could  not  advance 
her  fortunes  one  jot  nor  abate  by  a  line  the  difficulties  of  her 
present  position.  Wise  as  Dora  was,  and  far-seeing,  she  had 
not  always  the  best  kind  of  wisdom  ;  and  because  she  was  deft 
in  undoing  knots  she  was  not  always  sufficiently  careful  to  keep 
her  runnings  clear.  Like  many  clever  people  she  enjoyed  a 
complication  wherein  her  talents  could  be  exercised  ;  and  got 
herself  into  danger  for  the  pleasure  of  getting  out  of  it  again. 

"  How  I  like  being  with  you  and  Miss  Fletcher  ! "  said 
Patricia,  drawing  a  long  breath  as  she  and  Dr.  Fletcher  walked 
briskly  down  the  avenue,  and  her  load  seemed  already  lessen- 
ing from  the  mere  contact  with  one  whom  she  respected  and 
who  was  true. 

"  Do  you  ?"  he  answered,  looking  down  at  her  kindly. 
"  That's  right !  And  we  like  to  have  you.  Though  this  is 
more  natural  than  that  you  should  care  to  spend  your  time 
with  two  such  elderly  fogies  as  ourselves." 

"  Don't  say  that,  Dr.  Fletcher  !  Besides,  if  you  are  old,  you 
remind  me  of  my  dear  Barsauds  home  more  than  any  one  else 
does,"  said  Patricia  simply.  "  Though  you  are  so  unlike  him, 
I  feel  somehow  when  with  you  the  same  as  I  used  to  feel  with 


CONSENTING  WITH  SINNERS.  251 

my  uncle.     Only  I  had  no  Miss  Fletcher  then,"  she  added  a 
little  sorrowfully.     "  I  wish  I  had  had." 

Dr.  Fletcher  turned  his  eyes  on  her.     She  was  looking  up  at 
him  frankly,  affectionately,  as  she  used  to  look  at  her  uncle 
when  he  spoke  to  her.     In  a  minor  degree  truly,  less  tenderly, 
less  demonstratively,  but  in  the  same  spirit. 
He  smiled. 

"  I  take  that  as  the  highest  compliment  you  can  pay  me,"  he 
said. 

Then  he  turned  away  and  the  smile  faded  from  his  face. 
Miss  Fletcher  was  glad  to  see  her  pet,  and  half  surprised  that 
leave  had  been  given  her  to  come.     Knowing  Mrs.  Harnley  she 
was  very  sure  it  was  a  "  tight  pattern  "  for  poor  Patricia  from 
first  to  last.  She  pitied  her  with  her  whole  heart,  and  often  said 
to  her  brother  how  much  she  wished  they  could  take  her  away 
bodily,  and  bring  her  to  the  Hollies  for  life.     Perhaps  her  say- 
ing this  so  o'ften  had  made  him  think  of  ways  and  means.     But 
the  one  which  seemed  most  natural  was  just  the  way  which  was 
most  impracticable  ;  and  as  yet  the  woman's  loving  wish  to 
protect,  guide,  and  bless  the  girl,  had  no  issue  in  any  plan  on 
which  it  was  possible  to  act.      To-day  she  was  even  more  than 
usually  tender  to  the  poor  child.      She  saw  at  once  that  the 
young  soul  was  ill  at  ease,  and  that  something  had  gone  wrong ; 
and   Catherine  Fletcher  was  not  a  woman  of  that  kind   of 
motherliness  which  cares  only  for  the  body.      She  knew  in  her 
own  person  what  sorrows  and  difficulties  lie  in  the  heart  and 
mind,  in  the  affections  and  in  the  thoughts ;  and  the  strong  and 
generous  hands  which  cared  to  give  good  gifts  to  the  poor  cared 
also  to  bring  consolation  to  the  sad  and  surety  to  the  doubtful. 
Presently  Patricia  began  to  talk  about  the  perplexities  of 
life,  and  the  need  she  at  all  events — she  would  speak  for  no 
one  else — had  of  superior  direction  ;  how  she  envied  the  Roman 
Catholics  in  being  able  to  go  to  a  man  learned  in  righteousness 
and  spiritually  wise  who  could  tell  them  what  to  do  and  dis- 
entangle their  contradictory  duties  so  that  they  became  clear 
and  simple. 

"  And  if  you  had  a  director,  what  would  you  say  to  him, 
dear?"  asked  Miss  Fletcher,  who  saw  that  her  words  had  a 
personal  meaning. 

"Oh,  many  things,"  she  answered.     " But  I  do  not  want  fco 


252  "  VfTIAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

talk  of  myself.     I  only  want  to  know  what  ought  to  be  done, 
whether  by  me  or  by  any  one  else." 

"  Give  me  an  instance." 

"  Well,  -this,"  said  innocent  Patricia,  feeling  quite  diplomatic, 
and  sailing  as  near  to  the  wind  in  the  matter  of  honesty  as  was 
possible  for  any  right-minded  person.  "  If  you  knew  of  any- 
thing wrong  going  on  in  the  house  where  you  were,  would  you 
think  it  your  duty  to  tell  what  you  knew  to  the  head  of  the 
house  ? " 

"  That  depends,  my  dear,  on  two  things ;  one,  if  my  keeping 
fiilence  involved  my  being  mixed  up  in  anything  unworthy,  the 
other  if  keeping  silence  did  harm  to  others.  If  the  first,  I  should 
think  I  owed  it  to  my  own  self-respect  to  keep  my  hands  clean, 
and  if  I  could  do  that  only  by  public  protest,  I  would  make  it." 

"  But  I  am  not  mixed  up  in  it,  except  by  knowing  it  and 
keeping  it  secret — consenting  by  silence,"  interrupted  Patricia. 

"  You  see,  dear,  as  I  do  not  know  the  circumstances,  I  can- 
not answer  you  very  satisfactorily,"  returned  Miss  Fletcher. 
"  This  is  not  saying  that  you  are  to  confide  in  me.     If  the  secret, 
whatever  it  is,  is  not  your  own  you  must  not  tell  it  even  to  me :  / 
but  none  the  more  can  I  give  you  a  clear  answer." 

•"  No  one  can  answer  difficult  moral  problems  or  vague  hypo- 
theses," said  Dr.  Fletcher,  in  his  calm  way.  '  "  What  I  should 
say,  is  this.  If  you  have  personally  nothing  to  do  with  the 
circumstances  to  which  you  are  alluding,  leave  it  alone,  unless 
it  is  injuring  others,  and  then  I  think  you  are  bound  to  tell  it. 
As  a  rule  we  are  not  obliged  to  be  detectives  or  informants  ; 
though  most  young  people  who  care  for  truth  and  justice 
think  they  are  consecrated  to  this  task  before  all  others.  But 
there  is  a  world  of  difference  between  action  and  negation, 
sharing  and  silence." 

"  Yes,  I  see ;  but  it  is  so  dreadfulto  know  that  things  are  going 
wrong  and  people  being  deceived  every  day,  and  under  one's 
own  eyes  ! "  said  Patricia.  "  When  one  hears  things  said  that 
are  not  true,  it  makes  one  feel  as  if  one  told  stories  oneself  by 
not  crying  out  that  they  are  untrue." 

"  If  what  you  know  hurts  your  uncle  and  aunt,  you  ought  to 
tell  them,"  said  Miss  Fletcher.  "  If  it  implicates  you,  you  ought 
to  tell  them  also.  But  if  it  does  not  hurt  them,  and  is  only  a 
wrong  done  by  some  one  to  his  own  conscience,  his  own  sense 


CONSENTING  WITH  SINNERS.  253 

of  right,  leave  it.  Don't  you  see  ?  You  h&.*«  either  been  told 
in  confidence  or  you  have  found*  it  out  by  chance.  If  the  for- 
mer, you  are  bound  to  secrecy ;  if  the  latter,  you  need  not  con- 
stitute yourself  the  police  of  morality.  Are  you  any  clearer 
now  1 " 

"  Just  a  little,"  said  Patricia  with  a  heavy  sigh.  "  At  all 
events  I  will  not  speak,  at  least  not  yet." 

Neither  Dr.  Fletcher  nor  his  sister  took  Patricia's  perplexi- 
ties to  mean  more  than  a  discovery  of  some  of  those  domestic 
peccadilloes  which  are  inevitable  in  a  household  as  tightly  held 
as  Mrs.  Hamley's ;  human  nature  rebelling  against  undue  bond- 
age, and  rebellion  having  the  trick  of  expressing  itself  in  ugly 
forms  and  crooked  ways.  They  were  a  little  afraid  of  her  fear- 
lessness and  strong  sense  of  right ;  and  thought  it  better  to  curb 
rather  than  to  spur  her  on.  In  fact  they  took  her  fears  to  be 
probably  exaggerated ;  and  as  they  did  not  want  to  see  her 
become  meddlesome  or  officious  in  her  quest  after  the  noble  life 
they  put  her  off  with  an  anodyne  rather  than  a  solvent.  But 
if  they  soothed  her,  all  the  same  they  heartened  her ;  and  she 
went  back  to  her  prison  with  a  braver  will,  setting  herself  to 
bear  the  burden  of  Dora's  sin  with  as  much  courage  and  equa- 
nimity as  she  could  command,  and  hoping  for  both  relief  and 
solution  in  times  not  too  distant. 

"The  zeal  of  the  young  is  so  apt  to  outrun  discretion,"  said 
Dr.  Fletcher,  when  she  had  left.  "  But  what  a  noble  nature  it 
isl" 

"  Yes,  rarely  so ! "  his  sister  answered.  "  It  is  what  Mon- 
talembert  called  a  true  '  bath  of  life,'  to  be  with  Patricia  Kern- 
ball.  She  is  the  most  perfect  creature  of  the  natural  kind  I 
have  ever  seen.  She  reminds  me  of  the  old  classic  nymph,  or 
of  the  ideal  savage  princess,  clothed  but  not  converted  to  our 
odd  conventionalities  of  life." 

Dr.  Fletcher  smiled  and  said  yes,  but  made  no  further 
remark ;  and  then  Catherine  looked  for  a  moment  at  the  pic- 
ture of  a  young  knight  after  Albert  Diirer  hanging  on  the  wall, 
and  her  soft  brown  eyes  became  dreamy  and  mournful  as  she 
looked.  It  was  an  old  print  picked  up  at  a  broker's  in  London, 
which  had  reminded  her  of  Reginald  Kemball ;  and  for  that 
reason  had  been  hung  where  she  could  always  see  it.  For 
there  had  been  certain  love  passages  between  Catherine  and 


254  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

Keginald  in  olden  times  ;  love  passages  interrupted  in  the  bad 
old  way  of  jealousy  and  misunderstanding  when  Colonel  Lowe, 
then  a  dashing  young  officer  with  laurels  freshly  gathered  in 
the  Crimean  trenches,  had  come  down  to  set  the  world  of  Mill- 
town  womanhood  in  flame,  and  to  devote  himself  to  Catherine 
Fletcher  in  especial.  Reginald,  self-doubting,  jealous,  sore, 
poor,  had  taken  Captain  Lowe's  attentions  as  Catherine's  ac- 
ceptance. No  distinct  understanding  had  been  come  to  between 
the  unsuccessful  artist  and  the  squire's  daughter  ;  and  from  the 
time  when  Captain  Lowe's  fancy  had  turned  that  way,  he  took 
care  that  none  should  be  possible.  He  appropriated  Catherine 
in  that  quietly  determined  manner  in  which  some  men  contrive 
to  dominate  women  and  public  opinion ;  and  Milltown  put  its 
wisest  heads  together  and  settled  everything  to  its  satisfaction. 
Some  of  them  even  knew  the  price  of  the  bridal  gown  and  veil, 
and  where  they  were  bought ;  and  a  few  scented  wedding-cake 
in  a,  certain  clock-case  which  came  from  London.  There  was 
nothing  more  positive  than  that  Captain  Lowe  and  Catherine 
Fletcher  were  to  make  a  match  of  it ;  and  while  all  the  world 
waited  for  the  wedding,  Keginald  Kemball  went  off  to  London, 
and  in  a  fit  of  despair  married  Patricia's  mother — a  pretty  and 
affectionate  little  girl  who  was  badly  treated  at  home,  and  who 
fell  in  love  with  the  handsome  artist  at  sight. 

But  Captain  Lowe  did  not  marry  Catherine  Fletcher.  He 
was  deeply  in  debt,  and  Miss  Graham,  Lady  Anne's  daughter 
and  heiress,  had  a  dower  that  would  not  only  cover  his  defici- 
encies but  set  him  well  before  the  world  for  life.  So  he  mar- 
ried where  he  did  not  love,  and  only  "  for  money ;"  as  his  poor 
wife  found  out  when  too  late.  And  he  had  no  scruple  in  prov- 
ing to  her  that  what  she  had  found  out  was  correct.  He 
always  used  to  say  that  the  only  woman  he  ever  really  loved 
was  Catherine  Fletcher  j  and  he  passed  a  great  part  of  his  time 
in  bewailing  the  untowardness  of  circumstances  which  had  pre- 
vented his  marrying  her.  When  he  had  done  anything  speci- 
ally bad,  he  used  to  excuse  his  sin  to  himself  by  saying  that  he 
would  have  been  a  different  man  with  her.  He  would  never 
have  got  into  his  present  bad  habits  of  drink,  debt,  and  the 
race-course  ;  but  he  would  have  gone  out  in  his  profession,  and 
by  this  time  would  have  been  a  General.  He  would  have  made 
a  name ;  and  he  would  have  deserved  what  he  had  made.  All 


CONSENTING  WITH   SINNERS.  25 

the  potentialities  for  good  which  poor,  weak  Matilda  Graham 
had  had  power  to  render  abortive,  according  to  him,  would 
have  bloomed  and  blossomed  into  the  stateliest  growth,  the 
goodliest  fruit,  had  Catherine  Fletcher  taken  him  in  hand. 

With  only  a  germ  of  a  conscience,  with  no  sense  of  justice, 
and  with  the  moral  coward's  need  of  self-justification  and  a 
scapegoat,  Colonel  Lowe  laid  the  burden  of  his  sins,  which 
were  heavy,  on  the  shoulders  of  the  woman  whose  life  he  had 
ruined.  It  is  the  way  of  the  world ;  a  habit  belonging  by  na- 
ture to  the  average  §on  of  Adam  with  whom  Eve  is  always  the 
teterrima  causa,  and  the  woman  who  did  tempt  him.  Catherine 
Fletcher,  however,  would  not  have  married  Colonel  Lowe  had 
he  asked  her ;  so  his  unfortunate  wife  carried  more  blame  than 
she  deserved  on  this  side  as  well  as  on  others  :  and  the  Colonel's 
bewailirigs  were  as  baseless  as  those  of  &  qMld  who  runs  after 
a  rainbow— and  fails  to  catch  ik 


256  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?' 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES. 
<*i  • 

5ft  T  was  not  to  be  expected  that  the  Lowes  would  let  such  an 
j]['  insult  as  that  which  Mr.  Hamley  had  just  offered  to  the 
heir  of  the  house  pass  without  some  kind  of  notice  ;  though 
Sydney,  wisely  enough,  made  the  least,  not  the  most  of  it. 
But  the  question  was,  what  could  be  done  '?  It  was  a  disagree- 
able position  as  things  were,  but  how  could  it  be  bettered  ?  As 
Colonel  Lowe  said,  sagely  enough,  the  ruffian  would  not  fight 
if  he  was  called  out ;  and  there  was  no  case  for  a  summons — 
scarcely  one  for  a  thrashing.  A  man's  house  is  his  castle,  and 
if  he  chooses  to  be  king  on  his  own  door-step,  and  to  shut  the 
door  in  the  face  of  intruders,  there  is  no  One  to  gainsay  him, 
and  the  law  upholds  his  right  of  expulsion.  The  case  was  cer- 
tainly difficult ;  and  Colonel  Lowe  confessed  that  he  could  not 
see  his  way  clearly. 

On  the  one  hand  he  felt,  as  he  had  always  felt,  that  he  had 
condescended  too  low  in  receiving  Mr.  Hamley  as  a  guest  on . 
an  equal  footing.  A  man  who  had  worked  his  way  up  from 
sixpence  a  day  and  been  lashed  in  the  street  for  a  bare-footed 
beggar,  even  if  he  had  ultimately  come  to  the  possession  of 
Abbey  Holme,  was  not  like  a  man  born  in  the  purple  and 
wrapped  in  its  golden  fringes  from  the  beginning.  Yet,  on  the 
other  hand,  Mr.  Hamley  was  rich,  and  Crag  Toot  was  mortgaged 
up  to  the  chimney-pots ;  and  from  information  received  the 
Colonel  had  reason  to  believe  that  the  master  of  Abbey  Holme 
knew  more  about  that  mortgage  than  any  one  else,  save  him- 
self and  the  lawyer.  Then,  Sydney  was  evidently  deeply 
attached  to  that  pretty  piece  of  waxwork,  Dora  Drummond ; 
and,  such  being  the  case,  there  seemed  to  be  no  way  of  making 
him  take  kindly  to  the  idea  of  Julia  Manley,  even  with  her 
five  thousand  a-year  to  gild  her  freckles  and  beautify  her 
homely  camel  face.  It  was  odd  how  tenacious  and  unselfish 
tha  boy  was !  thought  the  father,  wondering.  He  did  not  believe 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES. 


257 


that  he  could  have  been  so  hard  hit,  and  so  disinterested. 
Though  he  was  sorry  for  it,  and  quite  capable  of  being  immov- 
ably severe  and  furiously  angry  if  Syd  still  went  on  persisting 
in  his  folly,  all  the  same  he  could  not  help  honouring  him  in 
his  own  heart— he  who  had  always  thought  his  boy  selfish, 
forced  now  to  rate  his  power  of  disinterested  love  as  superior 
to  the  charms  of  competency  for  life  ! 

Yet  none  of  these  thoughts  answered  the  one  grave  question : 
What  was  to  be  done?  The  gentleman's  blue  blood  boiled, 
but  the  embarrassed  man's  necessities  froze  it  back  to  calm- 
ness ;  the  father's  natural  wish  to  see  his  son  happy  plucked 
him  by  the  skirts,  but  the  aristocrat's  disdain  of  mud,  however 
thickly  mixed  with  gold,  held  him  by  the  sleeve ;  while  over 
all  flamed  the  fiery  man's  angry  passion  and  instinctive  desire 
to  lay  hands  on  his  foe. 

In  the  midst  of  his  perplexity  the  Colonel  bethought  himself 
of  Henry  Fletcher,  and  went  off  to  consult  "  the  wisest  man  in 
the  parish."  He  went  just  as  it  was  getting  dark,  at  about 
five  o'clock,  while  Patricia  was  there  taking  counsel  for  herself. 
But  when  the  two  men  were  seated  in  the  library — the  keen 
mobile  face  of  the  one  contrasting  so  strongly  with  the  thought- 
ful serenity  of  the  other — what  could  the  one  say  that  the 
other  did  not  know  ?  The  idea  of  Mr.  Hamley  fighting  a  duel 
with  Sydney  Lowe  was  as  absurd  as  that  of  his  playing  Harle- 
quin in  a  pantomime.  If  a  challenge  was  sent  he  would  simply 
refer  the  thing  to  the  gentlemen  on  the  bench,  his  brother 
magistrates,  stating  how  it  came  about  that  the  young  man  was 
thirsting  for  his  blood — because,  not  being  able  to  make  proper 
provision  for  his  adopted  daughter,  he  had  therefore  declined 
his  proposal  of  marriage.  And  the  bench  would  applaud  him, 
and  gravely  censure  Mr.  Sydney  Lowe,  with  public  ridicule  to 
follow.  No  ;  that  was  not  to  be  thought  of  for  a  moment. 

To  be  sure,  he  might  have  told  him  more  delicately.  Dr. 
Fletcher  allowed  that ;  but  "  what  can  you  expect  from  a  snob 
like  that  ?  a  beggar  on  horseback — a  self-mad^  cur ! "  said  the 
Colonel  disdainfully ;  with  a  moral  lunge  at  his  friend  and 
host,  who  at  this  moment  stood  in  some  sort  answerable  for 
Mr.  Hamley's  insolence.  For  was  he  not  a  "  confounded  Rad," 
and  thought  snobs  as  good  as  gentlemen  1  And  are  not  all 
who  uphold  the  rights  of  the  poor,  and  who  preach  the  fra- 
Q 


258  "  WH^T  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

ternity  of  men,  answerable  for  the  sins  and  shortcomings  ol 
their  plebeian  brethren  I 

Dr.  Fletcher  was  accustomed  to  these  moral  lunges,  and  never 
cared  to  oppose  or  to  return  them.  He  passed  them  quietly  by, 
and  went  on  to  the  second  head  of  the  subject  under  consider- 
ation ;  the  love-affair  between  the  young  people,  of  which  the 
Colonel  had  just  made  pathetic  use,  appearing  as  the  tendei 
father,  the  sympathetic  witness,  with  a  very  creditable  display 
of  the  softer  emotions. 

"  Well,  as  for  the  love  affair,"  said  Mr.  Fletcher,  "  that  oi 
course  rested  in  the  hands  of  the  young  people  themselves.  They 
were  of  age,  and  might  manage  that  as  they  chose.  If  theii 
love  was  as  strong  as  Colonel  Lowe  had  said,  could  not  some- 
thing be  done  to  set  them  up  in  hope,  if  not  in  present  means  t 
"Was  it  so  utterly  impossible  for  Sydney  to  do  anything  where- 
by he  might  gain  an  honest  living  t  In  fact,  would  not  a  sin- 
cere love  for  a  portionless  girl  give  an  incentive  to  exertion, 
such  as  nothing  else  could  supply  1  Might  it  not  prove  to  be 
one  of  those  blessings  in  disguise  which  sometimes  come  into 
men's  lives,  like  angels  unawares  t  Sydney  Lowe  might  do 
worse,  perhaps,  than  engage  himself  to  Dora  with  the  deter- 
mination to  make  a  home  for  her,  and  discover  the  means  of 
supporting  her  by  his  own  manful  work." 

"  Good  heavens,  Henry,  don't  talk  of  such  a  thing  !  "  inter- 
rupted the  Colonel  angrily — sympathy  with  young  love  scat- 
tered to  the  winds.  "  Marry  Miss  Drummond !  that  would 
be  the  crowning  misfortune — the  most  infernal  mischief  of  the 
whole  lot!" 

Take  it  all  round,  then,  and  from  above  and  below,  Mr. 
Ham  ley  was  master  of  the  situation.  He  always  was  mastei 
of  the  situation,  whatever  it  might  be.  For  what  else  had  he 
cultivated  his  will  as  he  had  done  ? — for  what  else  lived  through 
those  early  years  in  toil  and  penury,  preparing  the  ground  foi 
his  present  greatness,  if  he  could  not  stand  four-square  now, 
dominating  circumstances  t 

The  Colonel  felt,  he  said,  "  like  a  race-horse  haltered  by  a 
boor ; "  and  he  backed  up  the  simile  by  a  quantity  of  bad  lan- 
guage that  affected  the  matter  at  issue  about  as  much  as  the 
snorts  of  the  race-horse  would  have  affected  the  haltering  by 
the  boor.  But  as  oaths  and  imprecations  do  not  clear  a  man's 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES.  259 

brain,  Henry  Fletcher  brought  him  back  to  the  subject  in 
hand,  and  discussed  it  afresh  ;  till  they  both  came  to  the  con- 
clusion— nothing  was  to  be  done. 

"  And  I  might  have  saved  myself  the  trouble  of  asking  your 
advice  ! "  said  the  Colonel  ill-temperedly. 

"  Unless  talking  a  thing  over  makes  it  clearer,"  said  Dr. 
Fletcher.  "  I  think,  too,  it  is  always  satisfactory  to  know 
that  another  mind  sees  things  in  the  same  light  as  one's  self ; 
fur  two  people,  and  one  an  unimpassioned  spectator,  will  scarcely 
be  blinded  or  warped  in  concert." 

"  It 'is  not  much  of  blinding  or  warping,  if  by  that  you  mean 
friendly  partisanship,  that  any  one  will  get  from  you,  Henry," 
said  Colonel  Lowe  pettishly. 

And  Dr.  Fletcher  thought,  not  for  the  first  time,  that,  what- 
ever men  may  say,  women  are  not,  after  all,  the  exclusive  pos- 
sessors of  the  folly  lying  in  undisciplined  tempers. 

There  being  nothing,  then,  to  be  said  on  the  subject  beyond 
the  three  words  "  Leave  it  alone,"  the  two  men  went  into  the 
drawing-room,  where  Colonel  Lowe  drew  a  chair  close  to  Miss 
Fletcher,  and  began  to  talk  to  her  in  a  low  voice',  being  in  that 
mood  which  makes  a  man  long  for  a  sympathetic  auditor — a 
creature  with  soft  eyes  and  expansive  faith — to  whom  he  can 
tell  the  fact  of  his  grievance  while  keeping  back  the  form  of  the 
truth. 

He  always  went  for  sympathy  to  Catherine  when  things  went 
wrong.  True,  he  had  behaved  ill  to  her  ;  he  liked  to  believe 
that.  He  liked  to  believe  that  he  had  nearly  broken  her  heart, 
and  that  it  was  because  of  him  she  had  never  married  ;  but 
that  did  not  trouble  his  conscience  or  make  him  shy  of  seeking 
her  sympathy  when  he  thought  he  wanted  it.  She  was  his 
sanctuary,  the  refuge  to  which  he  fled  when  he  was  unlucky  on 
the  turf,  or  more  than  usually  discontented  with  his  unhappy 
wife  ;  or,  indeed,  when  he  was  only  idle,  and  wanted  amuse- 
ment. And  as  all  women  nourish  a  certain  tenderness  for  the 
man  who  has  once  been  in  love  with  them,  she  gave  him  the 
sweet  pity  for  which  he  came,  and  generally  did  really  soothe 
him.  He  was  always  "  poor  Charles  "  to  her ;  and  she  held  it 
as  an  article  of  faith  that  he  had  thrown  himself  away  on  Miss 
Graham,  and  might  have  done  better  had  his  wife  been  a  woman 
of  more  character.  She  was  wrong  there.  Men  of  Colonel 


260  .        "WHAT  WOULD  VOTJ  DO,  LOVE?" 

Lowe's  stamp  are  impatient  of  superior  women  as  their  wives. 
Slaves  suit  them  better,  seeing  that  they  must  be  tyrants,  not 
only  masters.  Better  keep  such  men  as  friends  only,  not  take 
them  as  husbands.  Friendship  with  a  dash  of  sentiment  in  it 
gets  the  wine  of  life,  where  marriage  soon  comes  to  the  lees  ; 
and  had  poor  Charles  and  dear  Catherine  married  they  would 
have  been  as  miserable  in  their  own  way  as  were  now  the 
Colonel  and  that  frightened  tormented  Matilda  of  his. 

While  Colonel  Lowe  sat  by  Catherine  and  played  at  senti- 
ment and  melancholy,  but  thinking  all  the  same,  "  Poor  dear 
Kate,  how  stout  she  grows ! "  and  while  Demeter  took  him 
into  her  honest  loving  heart  and  pitied  him  vaguely,  Dr.  Fletcher 
was  talking  to  Patricia  on  that  sentence  of  St.  Paul  :  "  For  I 
could  wish  that  myself  were  accursed  from  Christ  for  my 
brethren." 

"I  think,"  he  said,  "if  we  cared  more  about  others  and  less 
about  ourselves — more  to  do  that  which  is  good  for  our  neigh- 
bours and  less  merely  to  save  our  own  souls — it  would  be  better 
for  the  world  and  a  higher  state  generally  of  spiritual  life.  The 
great  art  of  righteous  living  is  to  live  for  others  and  the  ad- 
.  vancement  of  the  truth,  rather  than  for  our  own  individual 
moral  culture.  Herein  I  stand  against  Goethe  and  with  Paul." 

He  said  this  with  intention.  He  had  an  idea  that  Patricia 
was  in  danger  of  drifting  into  a  state  of  -rigid  selfhood  and 
moral  hardness,  virtuous  enough,  but  not  the  highest  virtue  ; 
and  he  wished  to  save  her  from  the  danger.  He  missed  his 
way.  Her  danger  was  in  excess  of  sacrifice,  and  the  fire  he  laid 
the  altar  kindled  more  than  was  needed. 

"  Yes,"  she  said  warmly,  "  I  will  remember  that." 

But  as  she  spoke,  she  turned  a  troubled  face  to  Colonel  Lowe  j 
and  Dr.  Fletcher,  though  he  had  not  the  key  to  the  riddle, 
noted  her  look.  Was  it  possible,  he  thought  after  a  while,  still 
watching  the  troubled  face,  that  her  perplexities  were  con- 
nected with  this  love-affair  between  Sydney  and  Miss  Drum- 
mond  1  Had  she  been  entangled  in  the  meshes  ?  dragged  into 
complicity  ?  The  -more  he  thought  and  the  keener  he  noted, 
the  more  he  seemed  to  see  light ;  but  he  resolved  to  keep  his 
suspicions  to  himself,  and  not  to  share  them  even  with  his  sister. 
Was  it  possible,  too,  that  this  love  affair  had  gone  farther  than 
was  known  I  He  had  no  idea  how  far,  and  his  mind  stopped 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES.  261 

short  of  real  evil.  He  imagined  nothing  worse  than  a  secret 
understanding  between  the  two  young  people  ;  but  a  secret  un- 
derstanding of  which  Patricia  had  been  made  free,  and  of  which 
her  honesty  felt  the  burden  grievous. 

He  was  sorry  if  she  had  been  implicated  in  this  matter,  and 
he  wished  he  could  help  her  to  clear  her  feet  from  the  snare 
into  which  she  had  run.  But  what  could  he  do  ?  Just  as  he 
was  powerless  in  counsel  with  the  Colonel,  so  was  he  unable  to 
be  of  use  to  Patricia.  He  could  not  ask  her  to  confide  in  him ; 
and  she  would  not  have  done  so  had  he  asked  her.  It  was  one 
of  those  miserable  passes  in  life  when  sorrow  is  unavoidable 
and  help  is  not  to  be  had  ;  when  the  soul  must  walk  through 
its  own  dangers  unaided  and  those  who  could  make  the  way 
smooth  must  stand  by  inactive. 

Presently  the  maid  came  in  with  the  information  that  the 
Abbey  Holme  servants  had  come  for  Miss  Kemball.  The 
lengthening  February  days  were  still  too  short  to  allow  her  to 
return  alone ;  for  the  twilight  had  come  by  now;  so  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley  sent  one  of  the  footmen  and  her  own  maid  to  bring  her 
back,  not  choosing  to  let  Patricia  be  seen  alone  with  a  man 
even  in  plush  and  with  a  powdered  head,  and  thinking  Bignold, 
unaccompanied,  insufficient  protection  for  a  walk  of  twenty 
minutes  in  a  place  where  everybody  knew  everybody  else, 
where  fustian  doffed  its  cap  and  said  "  Good  night"  to  broad- 
cloth as  if  class  homage  was  the  eleventh  commandment,  and 
where  all  the  grandees  were  of  the  Lord's  anointed  to. the  little 
people.  The  whole  country  round  Milltown  was  as  safe  as  the 
Abbey  Holme  drawing-room ;  but  Mrs.  Hamley  sent  a  man 
and  a  maid,  meaning  a  rebuke,  and  to  show  her  niece  how  trou- 
blesome and  upsetting  she  was. 

To-night,  however,  she  was  trebly  protected,  for  as  the  Co- 
lonel's way  home  lay  in  the  same  direction — Cragfoot  standing 
on  the  London  Koad,  past  Abbey  Holme — and  as  he  was  walk- 
ing he  insisted  on  going  with  her.  His  quarrel  was  with  Mr. 
Hamley,  not  with  Mrs.  Hamley's  handsome  niece;  and  he  en- 
joyed the  idea  how  angry  it  would  make  the  old  ruffian  to 
know  that  he  had  so  little  regard  for  him  as  to  deny  him  the 
triumph  of  annoyance,  and  that  he  was  so  profoundly  indif- 
ferent to  anything  this  other  could  say  or  do  as  to  be  able  to 
treat  one  of  the  family  with  his  customary  condescension. 


262  "WHAT  WOTTT/D  YOU  T)0,  LOVE?" 

So  Patricia  walked  off  with  her  companion,  followed  by  her 
two  guardians,  whereof  the  one  was  grim  and  the  other  impu- 
dent, devoutly  wishing  herself  back  in  the  wilds  of  Barsands 
where  were  neither  gentlemen  nor  powdered  footmen,  and 
where  she  could  come  and  go  as  she  listed  with  no  one  to  pro- 
tect her  and  no  one  from  whom  to  be  protected.  She  would 
not  have  minded  so  much,  she  thought,  if  Dr.  Fletcher  had 
been  with  them  ;  but  it  was  a  terrible  trial  to  be  thrown  sud- 
denly alone  into  the  hands  of  Colonel  Lowe,  knowing  what  she 
knew,  and  instinctively  dreading  him  as  she  did. 

The  Colonel  got  little  good  out  of  her  companionship.  Her 
frank  face  was  clouded;  her  loud,  clear,  argentine  voice  sub- 
dued ;  he  could  talk  of  nothing  that  interested  her,  of  nothing 
that  could  pull  her,  as  it  were,  out  of  the  enchanted  wood  of 
her  thoughts  ;  and  "  Dora  is  married  to  your  son"  was  so 
entirely  the  one  dominant  phrase  which  her  mind  kept  on  re- 
peating to  her,  that  she  was  in  terror  lest  she  should  unwit- 
tingly say  it  aloud.  What  he  asked  of  her  she  answered  ;  but 
shyly,  awkwardly,  like  an  underbred  school-girl.  He  threw 
her  countless  balls  of  conversation  and  she  did  not  pick  up  one. 
Certainly,  she  was  the  most  stupid,  the  most  uninteresting 
young  woman  he  had  ever  met  with,  he  thought  ;  and  talking 
to  her  was  simply  a  waste  of  good  material.  He  lapsed  into 
silence,  and  she  was  too  grateful  for  the  respite  to  disturb  it ; 
when,  turning  round  on  her,  he  said  with  an  affected  little 
laugh : 

"  Have  you  heard  anything,  Miss  Kemball,  of  this  silly 
affair  between  my  boy  and  Miss  Drummond  1 " 

Patricia  felt  as  if  he  had  struck  her  somewhere  about  the 
heart. 

"  Yes,"  she  said  in  a  low  voice. 

"  What  do  you  know  ? " 

What  was  she  to  answer  ?  Truth  certainly  ;  but  was  the 
whole  truth  part  of  her  duty  ?  Her  uncle's  last  words,  "  Never 
betray  a  friend,"  flashed  into  her  .mind.  Come  what  would, 
she  would  not  betray  Dora. 

"  That  Mr.  Lowe  came  to  Mr.  Hamley  to-day  about  Dora," 
she  answered,  after  a  pause. 

"  Mr.  Hamley  told  you  that  f  " 

"Yea." 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES.  263 

"  With  comments  ? " 

"  I  do  not  understand  you,"  said  innocent  Patricia. 

"  No  1 "  The  Colonel  smiled  with  a  bland,  superior  kind  ot 
smile.  "  Did  he  make  any  remark — tell  you  anything  but  the 
mere  fact  that  my  boy  had  asked  him  for  Miss  Drummuud's 
hand!" 

"  He  said  he  had  not  money  enough  to  marry  on,"  said 
Patricia. 

"  And  Miss  Drummond  assented  V 

Another  pause,  during  which  the  downcast  face  took  on 
itself  all  colours  and  all  expressions. 

"  Miss  Drummond  assented  1 "  repeated  the  ColoneL 

"  Yes,"  said  Patricia. 

"  She  allowed  that  my  boy  had  not  enough  to  marry  on  1 " 

"  Yes,"  she  said  again. 

"Did  she  acquiesce  quietly,  or  did  she  cry  or  ravel" 
laughed  Colonel  Lowe,  as  if  it  was  a  farce  he  was  rehearsing. 

"  Acquiesced  quietly,"  said  Patricia,  but  in  so  low  a  voice  he 
had  to  bend  his  ear  to  her  lips ;  and  even  then  he  made  her 
repeat  the  words  more  distinctly. 

"  And  she  made  no  scene,  you  say  t " 

He  went  over  the  ground  again  like  the  Christy-  Minstrels. 

"  No." 

"Did  not  cry  t" 

"  No." 

"Took  it  quietly  t" 

"  Yes." 

"  Quite  agreed  with  Mr.  Hamley  that  the  thing  was  absurd  1 
not  to  be  thought  of  1  insane  ? " 

"  I  don't  know  that  she  said  all  that,"  said  Patricia,  looking 
up. 

"  Still,  she  did.  agree  with  him  ?"  persisted  her  tormenter. 

"  She  said  they  could  not  live  on  nothing,"  said  Patricia. 

"  And  she  is  prepared  to  give  him  up  1 " 

Patricia  was  silent. 

"  Why  not  answer  me,  dear  Miss  Kemball  ?  The  question  is 
surely  not  so  difficult.  Is  she  or  is  she  not  prepared  to  give  up 
my  boy  1 " 

"  I  do  not  know,"  said  Patricia.  Then  with  the  courage-of 
desperation  she  cried,  "  It  is  scarcely  fair  to  cross-question  me 


264  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

in  this  manner,  Colonel  Lowe.  I  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
affair,  and  do  not  want  to  have  anything  to  say  to  it." 

"  Your  resolution  comes  rather  late  in  the  day,  my  dear 
Miss  Kemball,"  replied  the  Colonel  maliciously.  <;  You  have 
given  me  all  the  information  I  required,  and,*'  laughing,  "  I 
must  say  that  you  have  made  the  most  surpassing  witness. 
Transparency  is  an  inestimable  quality.  Good  evening,  and 
ten  thousand  thanks.  You  have  made  my  way  so  dear  to  me  1 
I  doubt  though,"  laughing  attain,  "  if  your  friend  Dora,  as  you 
call  her,  will  be  so  much  obliged  to  you  as  I  am." 

Lifting  his  hat,  the  Colonel  turned  sharply  away,  leaving 
Patricia  with  the  feeling  of  having  betrayed  her  trust  and  done 
her  friend  some  mysterious  mischief — she  who  would  have  done 
anything  in  the  world  but  dishonour  to  have  served  her. 

There  was  no  time  to  speak  to  Dora  before  dinner,  for  in 
truth  Dora  avoided  her.  She  knew  that  she  would  some  day 
have  to  "  fight  it  out"  over  those  little  answers  of  hers  to  Mr. 
Hamley,  but  she  was  not  in  the  mood  now.  She  wanted  her 
faculty  of  invention  and  all  her  brains  for  a  graver  purpose 
than  convincing  a  stupid  girl,  as  she  mentally  culled  her  friend, 
that  deceit  was  virtuous  and  lying  a  better  thing  than  truth. 
So  the  dinner  came,  and  Patricia  had  been  able  to  give  no  hint. 

"  What  an  extraordinary  companion  you  chose  for  your 
walk  home  ! "  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  when  the  servants  had  left 
the  room  after  dinner.  Bignold  had  enlightened  her  as  to  the 
young  lady's  nefarious  proceedings. 

"  I  did  not  choose  him ;  he  chose  me,"  said  Patricia. 

"  And  you  had  no  power  of  rejection  1 "  returned  Aunt 
Hamley.  "  Pardon  me,  that  is  the  privilege  of  all  ladies,  and 
one  that  can  always  be  exerted.  When  it  is  not  used,  it  is  pre- 
sumably "because  it  is  not  desired." 

"  If  you  mean,  aunt,  that  I  wanted  Colonel  Lowe  to  walk 
with  me,  I  did  not,"  said  Patricia  hastily.  "  I  do  not  like  him 
well  enough." 

Her  aunt  put  on  her  smile  of  frosted  graciousness  ;  Dora 
looked  up  with  a  rapid  glance  of  anger  and  astonishment  ;  Mr. 
Hamley's  colour  deepened,  and  he  turned  his  keen  eyes  on  his 
wife's  niece  viciously. 

"  So !  "  he  said  ;  "  you  tramp  about  the  country  with  that 
blackguard  bankrupt,  do  you  ?  Upon  my  word,  young  lady, 


BETWEEN  TWO  FIRES.  265 

« 

your  tastes  are  not  remarkably  refined  for  an  admiral's  grand- 
daughter." 

"  I  do  not  know  what  you  mean,"  said  Patricia,  lifting  her 
head  defiantly.  "  I  meet  Colonel  Lowe  at  the  house  of  friends 
and  I  go  with  you  yourselves  to  his  own  house.  I  do  not  see 
that  I  am  unrefined,  or  anything  else  that  is  bad,  for  speaking  to 
him  civilly  and  walking  on  the  same  side  of  the  way  with  him." 

"  Don't  be  impertinent,  Patricia,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  Your 
uncle  has  a  right  to  remonstrate  with  you.  And  in  the  present 
condition  of  affairs  between  the  two  houses  I  must  say  I  think 
your  conduct  both  unfeeling  and  indelicate." 

"  Aunt,  how  could  I  possibly  help  it  1 "  cried  Patricia  with 
warmth.  "  How  could  I,  a  mere  girl  as  I  am,  be  impertinent 
to  a  man  of  Colonel  Lowe's  age !  He  said  he  would  walk 
home  with  me  when  I  got  up  to  go  ;  what  could  I  say  to  pre- 
vent him  ?  " 

"  I  wish  you  were  always  so  considerate  to  the  superior 
claims  of  age  and  understanding,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  As  I 
said  before,  Patricia,  you  are  one  of  those  who  carry  their  vir- 
tues abroad  and  wear  only  their  faults  at  home." 

"  Was  Lowe  at  Fletcher's  ?  "  asked  Mr.  Hamley. 

So  soon  as  he  got  on  the  trail  of  facts  he  left  the  badgering 
of  the  girl  to  a  future  occasion. 

"  Yes,  he  called  while  I  was  there,"  said  Patricia. 

She  was  almost  grateful  for  the  diversion. 

"  Did  he  say  anything  about  to-day's  pretty  kettle  of  fish  1 " 

"  Not  there,  that  I  heard,"  she  answered, 

"  Not  there  ;  then  he  did  elsewhere  1 " 

"Only  to  me." 

"  Oh  !  '  only  to  me,'  did  he  ?  And  what  might  he  hare  said 
'only  to  me'?"  asked  Mr.  Hamley  with  a  mixture  of  mockery 
and  banter. 

"  Not  much,"  answered  Patricia. 

It  was  the  most  diplomatic  answer  she  had  ever  given.  But 
it  did  not  succeed.  Mr.  Hamley  rose  from  his  seat,  large, 
parabolic,  majestic.  He  walked  over  to  Patricia,  took  her 
wrists  in  one  hand,  and  turned  up  her  face  by  the  chin  with 
the  other. 

"  Look  me  in  the  face,  young  lady,"  he  said  in  a  deep  voice  ; 
"  no  subterfuges — I'm  not  the  man  for  them.  What  did  this 


•J(J6  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

bankrupt,  this  beggar,  say  to  you  to-day  t  Answer  straight, 
or" 

"  Leave  the  girl  alone,  Mr.  Hamley,  you  frighten  her,"  said 
Mrs.  Hamley. 

"No,  aunt"  answered  Patricia  proudly,  "he  does  not  frighten 
me.  I  have  done  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of.  Let  go  my  hands, 
Mr.  Hamley.  While  you  hold  them  I  will  not  open  my  lips." 

He  unclosed  his  thick  fingers. 

"  Now  tell  your  tale,"  he  said. 

"  I  have  none,"  said  Patricia,  looking  at  her  aunt,  not  at 
Mr.  Hamley.  "  Colonel  Lowe  asked  me  if  we  had  been  told  of 
his  son'g  call  to-day,  and  I  said  yes,  we  had.  Then  he  asked  if 
Dora  cried,  and  I  said  no" — ("  You  vile  wretch  !  "  said  Dora 
under  her  breath,  looking  at  her  with  a  sweet  little  smile) — 
"  and  if  the  acquiesced  in  the  decision,  and  I  «aid  yes." 

"  You  are  the  most  detestable  animal  I  know  !  I  will  repay 
you  for  this,"  said  Dora,  in  petto  again. 

"-You  spoke  like  a- sensible  girl,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  aloud. 

"  Then  you  might  have  spared  yourself  the  trouble  of  coming 
over  to  me,  and  me  the  indignity  of  your  touch,  Mr.  Hamley," 
cried  Patricia,  with  a  sudden  burst  of  angry  contempt  that  was 
like  anything  in  the  world  but  herself,  as  she  started  to  her 
feet,  wiping  her  hands  and  wrists  as  if  from  the  soil  of  his 
grasp. 

"  You  should  not  have  provoked  him,"  was  Mrs.  Hamley's 
reply  to  her  ;  but  to  her  husband  she  said,  "  You  ought  not  to 
have  touched  her,  Mr.  Hamley.  She  was  not  a  thief  who  was 
going  to  run  away." 

And  she  spoke  as  tartly  to  the  one  as  to  the  other. 

But  Patricia  did  not  hear  her.  For  the  first  time  in  her  life 
she  was  madly  passionate,  for  the  first  time  felt  insulted  and 
outraged.  As  she  stood  there  Hushed  and  rigid,  her  head 
thrown  back,  her  nostrils  dilated,  her  eyes  large  and  fixed,  and 
her  bosom  heaving,  she  became  suddenly  a  new  person  among 
them  all.  Hitherto  she  had  been  just  an  innocent,  amiable, 
clumsy,  and  guileless  child  whom  they  had  bullied,  and  ridiculed 
at  their  pleasure — whom,  indeed,  they  had  found  it  rather  amus- 
ing to  bully,  she  was  so  sorry,  so  surprised,  so  candid  and 
responsive !  Now  she  was  a  woman  whose  self  respect  was 
fairly  roused — an  antagonist  prepared  to  defend  herself. 


BETWEEN   TWO  FIRES.  267 

Mr.  Hamley  saw  he  had  gone  too  far. 
"  Friends,  my  dear  ? "  he  said  offering  his  hand. 
Patricia  folded  hers  within'  each  other,  and  kept  a  scornful 
silence. 

"  Don't  b.e  silly,  child  1  "  cried  Aunt  Hamley  crossly.  "  I 
declare  this  violence  of  yours,  these  vulgar  noisy  scenes,  will 
make  me  quite  ill.  Shake  hands  I  say  ?  " 

"  I  cannot  !  "  flashed  out  Patricia.  "  I  have  not  forgiven 
you,  Mr.  Hamley,  and  I  cannot  pretend  that  I  have." 

"  Do  you  know  what  I  would  do  with  you  if  you  were  my 
niece  ?  "  asked  Mr.  Hamley  quite  gravely. 

The  girl  made  no  answer  at  first.  Seeing  thai,  one  was  waited 
for,  she  said,  still  in  the  same  excited,  passionate  voice  :  "  I  do 
not  know,  and  I  do  not  care ;  and  thank  heaven  I  am  not  your 
niece  I " 

Mrs.  Hamley  looked  aghast,  and  Dora's  face  mirrored  hers. 
But  Mr.  Hamley  burst  into  a  coarse  laugh. 

"  Bravo,  my  dear ! "  he  cried.  "  Splendid.  What  a  per- 
former you  would  have  made !  Well,  thank  heaven  too  on 
my  side,  as  I  may  say,  that  you  are  not  my  niece  !  I'd  as  lief 
have  a  tiger  cub  !  But  if  you  were,  I'd  kiss  you  well,  and  see 
if  you  would  not  forgive  me  then  ] " 

He  made  a  step  forward  as  if  to  put  his  threat  into  execu- 
tion, when  Patricia  caught  up  a  knife.  It  was  only  a  silver 
dessert-knife  ;  but  she  did  not  know  that. 

"  If  you  touch  me  I  will  stab  you  ! "  she  said.  And  she 
looked  what  she  said. 

The  scene  was  never  forgotten. .  From  that  hour  it  became 
a  Hamley  tradition  that  Patricia  only  wanted  opportunity  to 
develop  into  a.  murderess,  and  that  her  temper  was  simply 
fiendish.  But  strange  to  say  Mr.  Hamley  seemed  both  to  like 
and  respect  her  more  than  he  had  ever  done  before ;  and  many 
times  privately  expressed  his  opinion  that  the  girl  had  some- 
thing in  her  if  it  could  only  be  properly  brought  out.  And  he 
was  the  man  to  do  it. 

The  next  morning,  however,  the  night  having  brought  good 
counsel,  Patricia  went  up  to  him  at  breakfa'st,  and  held  out  her 
hand.  Very  pretty  she  looked  with  that  frank  penitence  on 
her  fine  face,  and  her  eyes  a  little  moist  with  shame  and  the 
effort  she  was  making. 


268  "WHAT  WOFTLD  VOC  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  I  am  very  sorry,  Mr.  Hamley,"  she  said,  "  that  I  was  so 
cross  last  night ;  and  I  hope  you  will  forgive  me." 

"  Oh,  don't  mention  it  I  beg,"  answered  Mr.  Hamley  with 
magnanimous  acceptance.  "We  all  get  put  out  at  tim.es. 
Even  I  myself  am  not  always  up  to  what  I  call  high-water  mark. 
But  you  certainly  did  take  me  a  little  aback,  a-wanting  to  stab 
me  with  a  dessert-knife  !  "  He  laughed  noisily,  and  struck  out 
his  limbs  as  his  manner  was. 

"  I  thought  it  was  steel,"  said  Patricia  simply. 

Then  she  turned  to  Aunt  Hamley. 

"  And  I  ought  to  ask  you  to  forgive  me  too,  dear  aunty,"  she 
said  tenderly ;  "  I  had  no  right  to  make  such  a  scene  before 
you." 

"  No,  you  had  not,  Patricia,"  returned  her  aunt.  "  A  young 
lady,  my  niece,  talking  of  stabbing  her  uncle  indeed  !  What 
is  the  world  coming  to,  I  wonder,  when  such  horrors  as  this 
are  tolerated  ? " 

Patricia  looked  down.  She  did  really  look  very  sorry  for 
her  sin,  and  her  child-like  confession  touched  Mrs.  Hamley 's 
heart.  It  was  the  kind  of  thing  she  liked  ;  a  moral  bending  of 
the  stiff  young  neck,  and  putting  it  under  her  own  feet,  that 
just  suited  her. 

"  Well,  my  dear,  now  that  you  are  sorry, -we  may  as  well  say 
forget  and  forgive — hey,  Lady  ? "  said  Mr.  Hamley,  who  did  not 
want  for  a  certain  coarse  good-nature,  especially  towards  women. 
"  Come,  give  me  a  kiss,  and  make  up." 

"  I  will  make  up,  but  I  will  not  kiss  you,"  said  Patricia 
gravely. 

»  "  Absurd  !  why  should  you  not  kiss  your  uncle  ? "  cried  Mrs. 
Hamley,  who  yet  was  angry  with  her  husband  for  asking  thi» 
grace,  and  who  would  not  have  been  more  pleased  had  Patricia 
obeyed  than  she  was  now  when  she  refused. 

"  I  have  never  kissed  any  man  but  my  own  dear  uncle,"  said 
Patricia,  her  voice  sad  and  low;  "and,"  lifting  her  eyes,  "Gor- 
don." 

"  Gordon  !     Who  is  Gordon  1 "  cried  Aunt  Hamley. 

"  Gordon  Frere — my  Gordon,"  she  answered. 

"  Oh  !  "  said  Aunt  Hamley  wearily,  "  more  complications  1 
Here  is  a  love-affair  now !  Go  to  your  place,  child,  do,  and 
don't  keep  the  breakfast  waiting  any  longer  1  How  I  wish  you 


BETWEEN  TWO   FIRES.  269 

were  as  sensible  as  Dora  there.  It  is  a  positive  relief  to  look 
at  her,  so  quiet  and  amiable  and  well-bred  as  she  is !  You  will 
be  the  death  of  me  before  I  have  done  with  you,  and  then  I 
suppose  you  will  be  satisfied." 

This  was  the  first  time  Aunt  Hamley  had  heard  of  Gordon, 
and  she  took  care  not  to  enquire  more.  If  she  should  ever  have 
favourable  views  for  her  niece,  it  would  be  the  better  policy  to 
know  nothing  inimical  to  them  ;  and  she  dreaded  rather  than 
courted  information  and  confession  on  the  subject  of  an  unde- 
sirable young  man — for  he  must  be  that  if  Patricia  had  picked 
him  up  of  her  own  motion  at  that  awful  Barsaiids  1 


27Q  "WHAT  WOULD  VOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

A    MYSTERY. 

tHE  next  meeting  between  the  two  young  lovers  was  a 
stormy  one.  Dora  had  written  to  Sydney  to  tell  him 
how  she  had  wept  when  Mr.  Hamley  told  her  what  had 
happened;  how  she  had  besought  him  to  be  more  merciful; 
how  she  had  expressed  her  determination  to  be  faithful  unto 
death  : — and  Colonel  Lowe  took  back  Patricia's  version,  which 
somehow  sounded  like  truth,  and  carried  with  it  conviction. 

So  that  when  the  next  meeting  came  there  was  but  little  love 
to  cheer  them  in  the  darkness  of  their  circumstances  and  the 
blackness  of  the  night.  Sydney  made  Dora  responsible  for 
Mr.  Hamley's  insolence,  and  she  made  him  responsible  for  Lis 
own  failure.  He  reproached  her  with  her  double  dealing — play- 
ing into  the  hands  of  the  enemy,  according  to  the  account  given 
by  Patricia ;  she  tossed  her  small  head  disdainfully,  asked  him 
how  he  could  be  so  dense  as  not  to  see  that  this  was  a  blind  to 
be  adopted  merely  in  public  1 — and  assured  him,  with  the  half 
reluctance  of  virtue  wrongfully  accused  and  too  proud  to  vin- 
dicate itself,  that  she  had  really  wept  and  besought  as  she  had 
said,  but  in  private  and  to  Mr.  Hamley  alone. 

"  Du  you  think  I  would  have  made  a  scene  ? "  she  asked  with 
a  fine  irony  ;  "  that  would  not  be  quite  like  me  !  " 

But  Sydney  was  not  satisfied  ;  and  they  walked  in  the  cold 
dark  shrubbery,  and  quarrelled  without  ceasing ;  and  when  it 
began  to  rain,  they  went  into  the  shelter  of  the  conservatory 
and  quarrelled  there.  They  were  like  creatures  caught  in  a  net, 
both  the  one  and  the  other ;  and  the  thing  they  had  called  love, 
which  had  brought  them  there,  had  suddenly  turned  bitter  in 
their  mouths  and  heavy  on  their  hands.  Sydney  had  but  one 
cry,  "  Money — I  must  have  money  ! "  and  Dora  but  one  answer, 
"  I  cannot  help  you." 

Then  Sydney  flung  Miss  Manley  and  her  five  thousand  per 
annum  in  Dora's  face,  and  claimed  her  gratitude  for  the  sacri- 


A  MYsTfiRf.  .  271 

fice ;  and  Dora  brandished  the  potentiality  of  my  Lady  Merrian 
in  his,  were  she  free  to  encourage  those  who  only  asked  leave 
to  seek.  But  when  she  said  this  Sydney  became  furious,  and 
vowed  he  would  take  her  away  in  the  sight  of  all  men  carry 
her  to  a  garret  in  London  and  slow  starvation,  rather  thau  have 
any  one  else  trenching  upon  his  rights,  and  paying  attei  lion  to 
the  woman  who  was  his  property. 

And  when  he  said  this  he  frightened  her,  and  made  i\er  cry  ; 
the  threat  of  confessing  their  marriage  being,  of  all  the  misfor- 
tunes possible  to  be  encountered,  the  one  most  formidable  to 
her,  the  most  terrible.  Things  were  bad  enough  as  they  were, 
with  that  compelling  service  at  St.  Pancras  last  October  and 
Lord  Merrian  riding  over  to  Abbey  Holme  to  discuss  the  Music 
of  the  future  and  look  admiringly  into  her  eyes !  Things  were 
bad  enough  indeed,  with  the  leisurely  repenting  closing  up  so 
sternly  on  the  hasty  marriage.  All  that  could  be  done,  how- 
ever, to  mitigate  the  disaster  into  which  they  had  plunged 
themselves  was  to  maintain  silence  and  secrecy  ;  to  keep  their 
own  counsel  absolutely  unshared ;  and  to  trust  to  chance  and 
time  for  their  better  direction. 

Dora  did  not  tell  Sydney  that  Patricia  had  found  out  their 
secret.  She  reserved  this  for  an  occasion  when  it  might  be  of 
use  to  her.  She  knew  as  well  as  any  one  the  value  of  a  stone 
in  the  sleeve,  and  she  was  an  adept  in  the  art  of  keeping  hers 
unsuspected  and  always  handy. 

So  they  quarrelled  and  made  up  again  ;  talked  and  pouted, 
and  then  kissed  each  other ;  and  Dora  now  cried  and  now  lisped, 
and  sometimes  drove  Sydney  frantic  with  her  seductions,  and 
sometimes  just  as  frantic  the  other  way  with  her  provocations. 
But  before  the  young  man  left,  the  main  object  of  his  visit  had 
been  accomplished  ;  Dora  had  gone  back  to  the  house,  had  look, 
ed  into  Mrs.  Hamley's  work-table  drawer  where  she  knew  tne 
lady  had  placed  a  rouleau  often  new  bright  sovereigns  received 
from  Mr.  Hainley  that  morning,  and  of  which  drawer  she  had 
a  key  that  would  fit ;  had  come  out  again,  and  had  put  that 
rouleau  into  Sydney's  hands,  half  laughing  and  half  crying. 
The  cleverness  of  the  trick  amused  her,  but  she  resented  the 
screw  under  the  pressure  of  which  she  had  made  herself  a  thief. 

"  There  will  be  an  awful  row  when  this  is  found  out !  "  she 
said  to  Sydney.  "  I  cannot  think  how  it  will  be  got  over." 


272  "WHAT  woT'T.n  Yor  no. 

"  Oh,  you  are  so  clever,  you  can  devise  something,"  he  an- 
swered. 

"  I  don't  see  why  I  should  devise  anything ! "  she  said.  "  Mrs. 
Hamley  will  not  suspect  me,  why  can't  I  leave  it  alone  1 " 

"  I  leave  the  ways  and  means  to  you,"  laugfied  Sydney ; "  only 
don't  risk  your  own  dear  little  neck  !  " 

"  Much  you  would  care  if  I  did  !  "  she  said  petulantly. 

"  Oh,  yes  I  should,  Body  1  Little  fool,  as  if  I  did  not  love 
you,"  he  answered  tenderly. 

But-  Dora  was  in  no  humour  to  be  coaxed.  She  drew  her- 
self away  from  his  arms,  saying :  "  Don't,  Sydney  !  I  don't 
like  it ! "  as  if  she  was  quite  unused  to  his  methods,  and  found 
his  love-making  reprehensible  as  well  as  strange. 

"  You  cross  little  thing,  I'll  be  hanged  if  I  ever  come  to  see 
you  again !  "  said  Sydney  rudely. 

"  And  I  am  sure  I  wish  you  would  not.  I  don't  see  much 
pleasure  in  coming  out  such  weather  as  this  to  be  quarrelled 
with !  "  was  Dora's  snappish  answer. 

And  with  the  word  she  hurried  away  and  ran  back  into  the 
house  ;  and  Sydney  nearly  got  them  both  into  trouble  by  the 
loud  voice  with  which  he  called  "  Dora !  "  and  which  struck 
upon  Mr.  Hamley's  ear  just  as  he  awakened. 

As  he  heard  nothing  more,  though  he  sat  up  in  bed  to  listen, 
he  concluded  that  a  dream  had  played  the  usual  trick  of  dreams 
with  him,  and  turned  himself  round  with  a  smile  on-  his  sleepy 
face. 

"  Little  beauty,  my  life  would  be  a  blank  without  her  ! "  he 
said,  just  as  Dora  crept  up  the  last  flight  of  stairs,  and  stole 
along  the  carpeted  passage  to  her  own  room  ;  revolving  in 
her  mind  how  she  should  act  to-morrow  when  Mrs.  Hamley 
came 'to  the  knowledge  of  her  loss — whether  to  prepare  the 
way  for  suspicion  or  let  things  take  their  course  without  in- 
termeddling. By  the  time  she  was  undressed  she  had  ma- 
tured her  plans,  and  to-morrow  would  see  them  executed. 

The  next  day  Alice  Garth  was  in  the  drawing  room  with  the 
two  girls,  settling  some  work  for  her  young  mistress.  M  rs. 
Hamley  had  gone  into  the  housekeeper's  room  to  arrange  the 
day's  commissariat ;  for  she  was  her  own  head  housekeeper, 
with  cook  to  help  rather  than  to  rule ;  and  her  work  table 
drawer  was  standing  about  a  quarter  of  an  inch  open. 


A  MYSTERY.  273 

"  Patricia,  dear,  will  you  just  open  that  drawer  and  give  me 
»  skein  of  blue  silk  I  believe  you  will  find  there  1  "  said  iJura. 
"  I  am  sure  Mrs.  Hamley  will  let  me  have  it." 

"  You  are  sure  she  will  not  mind  my  touching  her  things  ?" 
asked  Patricia  half  reluctant.  Her  fear  of  her  Aunt  Hamley 
was  deepening  to  quite  a  wholesome  extent;  and  in  her  state 
of  earnest  desire  not  to  offend  again,  since  her  outbreak  over 
the  silver  dessert-knife,  she  was  learning  a  tact  almost  as  nice 
as  Dora's  own. 

"  Oh,  certain  ! "  lisped  Dora.    "  Of  course  not,  else  I  would 
not  have  asked  you,"  laughing  ;  *'  it  is  just  in  front,  I  know." 
Patricia  opened  the  drawer  and  removed  one  or  two  things 
discreetly. 

"  I  see  no  skein  of  blue  silk,  Dora,"  she  said. 
"  You  dear  little  blind  eyes ! "    laughed   Dora,   whose  fair 
face  was  rather  flushed  this  warm  spring-like  day.     "  Here, 
Alice,  do  you  go  and  help  Miss  Kemball  to  find  it." 

Alice  flung  her  work  over  her  arm  and  went  to  the  drawer ; 
lifting  a  few  things  also  discreetly,  but  perhaps  a  little  more 
with  the  tips  of  her  fingers  than  Patricia  ;  but  neither  could 
she  see  the  skein  of  blue  silk ;  and  then  Dora  said  good-humour- 
edly — she  was  such  a  pleasant  young  lady  to  serve — 

"  Never  mind,  then.  I  must  say  you  are  one  as  blind  as  the 
other,  but  it  does  uot  signify ;  and  perhaps  Mrs.  Hamley  has 
taken  it  away." 

So  the  subject  like  the  search  dropped,  and  presently  Dora 
found  the  skein  in  her  own  work-box,  and  laughed  lightly  at 
the  incident. 

Then  Alice  left  the  room  with  her  patterns  and  her  instruc- 
tions, and  Mrs.  Hamley  returned  from  the  offices,  her  duties  as 
the  chatelaine  ended  for  the  day  so  soon  as  she  should  have 
paid  cook's  bill,  for  which  she  had  the  money  ready  packed. 

She  opened  her«work-table  drawer  and  looked  in,  specially 
moving  a  black  and  gold  needle-case  which  Dora  had  made  for 
her  years  ago ;  the  child's  first  piece  of  well-conducted  fancy- 
work,  and  for  which  she  had  the  maternal  fondness  that  hallows 
the  early  work  of  children.  She  looked  twice,  thrice,  and  all 
about  the  drawer ;  then  she  muttered,  "  How  extraordinary  ! " 
and  looked  out  into  the  room  as  if  considering. 

Dora   watched    her  furtively   without  seeming  to   do   go. 


2?4          "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

Patricia,  to  whom  the  drawer  and  the  skein  of  blue  silk  and 
the  black  and  gold  needle-case  had  no  more  significance  than 
so  many  unnumbered  dominoes,  had  her  head  in  the  French 
grammar ;  covering  the  lines  with  her  hand,  which  she  brought 
down  a  step  gradually  as  she  repeated  in  a  whisper  to  herself, 
"  Je  souffre,  tu  souffres,  il  souffre,"  and  so  on.  Mrs.  Hamley, 
still  with  her  look  of  deep  consideration,  of  searching  back  in 
her  memory  and  general  bewilderment  of  mind,  left  the  room 
silently,  but  after  a  time  came  in  again  and  once  more  turned 
over  the  things  in  her  drawer. 

"  How  extraordinary  ! "  she  murmured  again,  and  looked 
with  a  kind  of  perplexed  ill-temper  at  both  the  girls. 

The  two  tranquil  faces  she  scanned  so  curiously  told  her  no- 
thing. Dora,  with  a  pretty  little  smile  of  loving  recognition 
on  her  small  fresh  lips,  looked  up  from  her  work  as  guileless  as 
the  dove  that  was  her  favourite  emblem.  Patricia  was  staring 
vacantly  at  the  ceiling,  repeating  with  praiseworthy  diligence: 
"  Je  souffrirai,"  and  "  nous  souffrirons." 

What  had  either  to  do  with  the  mysterious  displacement  or 
loss  out  of  the  little  work-table  drawer  ?  What  could  either 
have  to  do  with  it1?  Mean  and  irritating  in  small  things,  Mrs. 
Hamley  had  a  certain  dignity  of  action  on  large  occasions.  Her 
temper  was  more  in  fault  than  her  heart ;  and  though  she  did 
not  scruple  to  make  her  house-mates  unhappy,  she  would  not 
willingly  have  wronged  them.  It  seemed  to  her  an  insult  she 
could  not  possibly  offer  to  ask  either,  such  good  girls  as  both 
were,  if  they  knew  in  any  way  of  her  loss.  How  could  they  ? 
She  remembered  now  that  only  Dora  was  in  the  drawing-room 
yesterday  when  she  put  the  roll  away ;  what  then  could  Patri- 
cia possibly  know  of  it  t  Besides,  was  not  the  one  as  absolutely 
clear  as  the  other  t 

She  was  perplexed  and  distressed,  and  on  Patricia's  going 
out  of  the  room  to  get  a  dictionary,  she  looked  at  Dora  wist- 
fully— Dora,  her  dear  child,  her  consoler  in  all  her  little  afflic- 
tions— and  Dora  went  over  to  her  at  once,  and  kneeling  by 
her,  said  prettily  : 

"You  look  disturbed,  dear.  Have  you  lost  anything?  or 
heard  any  bad  news  ? " 

"  The  most  wonderful  thing  has  happened,  Dora ! — I  cannot 


A  MYSTERY.  275 

make  it  out !  "  answered  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  I  put  a  roll  of  gold 
in  here  yesterday,  and  now  it  has  gone." 

"Gone?  Oh  !  how  strange.  Why,  how  can  it  have  gone?" 
said  Dora,  putting  the  tips  of  her  fingers  into  the  drawer  as  if 
they  were  magnets,  and  the  missing  sovereigns  stray  filings. 
"  You  surely  must  have  overlooked  it,  dear." 

"No,  I  have  not.  I  have  moved  everything — searched 
thoroughly,"  she  answered. 

"  I  never  heard  of  anything  so  odd.  What  can  have  become 
of  it  ? "  said  Dora,  moving  thimbles  and  reels  to  make  sure 
that  the  roll  of  gold  had  not  lost  itself  in  the  shadow.  "  Do 
you  think  it  can  have  got  behind  the  drawer  ?  Let  me  take  it 
out  and  look.  No  ! "  she.  cried,  as  she  peered  carefully  into 
the  hollow,  "  there  is  nothing  there.  How  very  odd  !  " 

"  Who  can  have  taken  it  ? "  said  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  No  one 
ever  goes  to  my  drawer,  and  it  is  always  kept  locked ;  and  we 
have  no  one  in  the  house  that  I  could  possibly  suspect.  To  be 
sure  there's  the  new  kitchen-maid,  but  she  could  not  know  of 
it." 

"  No,  no  one  could  know  of  it,"  said  Dora,  reflectively.  Then 
suddenly,  as  if  the  remembrance  of  an  unimportant  event  which 
might  have  important  issues  had  just  struck  her,  she  told  Mrs. 
Hamley  how  Patricia  and  Alice  Garth  had  looked  in  for  a 
skein  of  blue  silk  which  Alice  wanted  for  her  work,  and  which 
she  thought  was  there.  They  did  not  touch  the  things,  she 
went  on  to  say  with  a  fine  earnestness  of  advocacy  that  pleased 
Mrs.  Hamley.  They  did  no  harm  ;  she  was  sure  of  that ;  and 
they  could  not  have  interfered  with  the  roll  at  all.  It  might 
by  some  strange  chance  have  caught  in  their  fringes  or  sleeves  ; 
but  then  it  would  have  fallen  on  the  carpet,  and  she  and  they 
must  have  heard  it.  It  was  not  there  too,  as  she  found  by 
moving  the  chairs  and  footstools,  sofas  and  tables,  to  the 
remotest  corner  of  the  room.  She  was  indefatigable  in  her 
exertion^  aud  Mrs.  Hamley  thought  how  good  and  sympathetic 
•she  was. 

"  Well,  I  don't  suppose  either  of  them  took  it  on  purpose — 
stole  it,  in  fact,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  sharply.  But  she  said  in 
her  own  heart,  "  How  I  wish  Patricia  had  not  left  the  room  as 
she  did ! " 

"  No,  I  suppose  not,"  said  Dora  quietly.      !'  Of  all  three, 


276  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

Patricia,  Alice,  or  myself,  I  should  as  soon  suspect  one  as  the 
other." 

"  But  in  any  case  I  will  not  allow  my  things  to  he  touched," 
Mrs.  Hamley  said  with  temper.  She  was  getting  cross  now, 
and  Dora's  diligence  in  search  was  losing  its  effect.  "You 
ought  to  have  prevented  them,  Dora  ;  you  know  how  particu- 
lar I  am,  and  how  much  I  dislike  to  have  my  things  interfered 
with  and  pulled  about." 

"Yes,  dear;  I  know  I  was  wrong;  I  should  have  stopped 
them,"  said  Dora.  "  But  I  assure  you  they  did  nothing  more 
than  just  look  into  the  drawer." 

"  We  will  say  no  more  about  it,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  with  a 
sudden  greyness  on  her  face.  "  It  is  one  of  those  mysteries  I 
do  not  like  to  think  of,  and  that  no  thinking  can  make  clear. 
Tell  me  though,  who  went  to  the  drawer  first  ? " 

«  Patricia." 

"  And  then  Alice  Garth  ? " 

«  Yes,  then  Alice." 

"  What  can  that  girl  be  about?"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  irritably. 

"  Who,  dear'?  "  asked  Dora. 

"  Patricia ;  where  is  she  ? " 

"  She  went  out  of  the  room  for  a  book,  I  dare  say.  She  was 
learning  a  French  verb,  I  know." 

"I  wish  she  would  come  back  !"  said  Mrs.  Hamley,  and 
fretfully  re-arranged  the  work-table  drawer. 

"  Shall  I  go  and  call  her  ? "  suggested  Dora. 

But  Mrs.  Hamley  said  "No,"  and  re-arranged  the  things 
with  redoubled  energy.  Suddenly  she  said  :  "  Go  to  the  maids' 
room,  Dora,  and  ask  Alice  if  she  has  found  anything  in  her 
sleeves  or  hanging  about  her  anywhere.  Do  not  tell  her  what 
I  have  lost,  but  just  ask  her." 

"  Yes,  dear,"  said  obedient  Dora,  gliding  swiftly  and  noise- 
lessly from  the  room. 

While  she  had  gone,  Patricia  came  back,  holding  on  by  a 
huge  French  dictionary  which  she  was  carrying  in  the  old 
cushion  and  kitten  fashion,  under  her  arm. 

"  Where  have  you  been,  child  ? "  asked  Mrs.  Hamley  very 
sharply. 

"  In  the  library,  aunt,  looking  for  this,"  said  Patricia,  startled 
at  her  tone. 


A  MYSTERY.  277 

"  What  a  time  you  have  been  !  Come  to  the  fire — getting 
cold  in  this  way  !  " 

"  I  am  not  cold  at  all,  aunt,  thank  you.  There  was  a  large 
fire  in  the  library,"  she  answered  pleasantly. 

"  Come  here,  I  say !  "  reiterated  Aunt  Hamley  in  an  authori- 
tative manner. 

And  Patricia,  wondering,  went. 

"  Not  cold,  your  hands  are  like  ice  !  "  said  Aunt  Hamley, 
touching  her  as  she  passed  ;  "  and,  good  gracious,  child,  what 
do  you  keep  in  your  pocket  ? "  she  added.  "  It  bulges  out  like 
a  schoolboy's.  What  have  you  in  it  1  stones  or  nuts  and  apples, 
or  what  ? " 

"  Something  of  everything,"  laughed  Patricia  colouring. 
"  Let  me  see,"  said  Aunt  Hamley  in  a  low  voice,  trembling. 
"  Dear  aunt,  yes,  if  you  like.  I  have  no  secrets,"  said  the 
girl,  tumbling  out  into  her  aunt's  lap  a  heterogeneous  collection 
of  the  most  extraordinary  odds  and  ends  a  girl  could  possibly 
get  together ;  string,  wax,  a  foot-rule  that  folded  in  three,  a 
screw,  a  few  white  pebbles  which  Gordon  had  given  to  her  as 
possible  agate  or  white  cornelian,  a  huge  buckhorn-handled 
knife  of  the  kind  called  in  the  north  jackylegs,  or  joctelegs, 
two  pocket-handkerchiefs,  and  a  pair  of  garden-gloves.  No 
wonder  her  pocket  bulged ! 

For  the  unwomanliness  of  the  collection,  and  its  disorderly 
character,  Patricia  got  a  severe  lecture;  but  Aunt  Hamley 
found  not  a  trace  of  what  she  sought.  It  was  horrible  to  have 
had  even  this  momentary  suspicion,  but  what  could  she  do  1 
She  was  confronted  with  the  undeniable  fact  that  her  ten  sove- 
reigns had  been  abstracted  and  that  no  one  had  been  near  the 
place  where  they  were  save  Patricia  and  a  steady,  good,  modest 
girl,  the  daughter  of  a  yeoman  farming  his  own  land,  who  was 
almost  as  far  above  suspicion  as  her  niece.  If  she  had  allowed 
her  mind  to  wander  into  the  depths  for  a  moment,  who  could 
blame  her  ?  A  rouleau  of  gold  cannot  go  out  of  a  drawer  with- 
out hands,  and  the  police  always  say :  "  Look  for  the  thief 
where  you  least  suspect." 

So  she  reflected  and  tried  to  soothe  her  conscience  for  having 
dreamed  of  suspecting  her  nieee  only  to  fall  on  to  the  other  horn 
of  the  dilemma,  when  at  night  she  told  the  whole  circumstance 
to  her  husband,  and  asked  him  what  he  thought. 


278  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

u  Alice  Garth,"  he  said.  "  Make  your  mind  easy,  Lady,  that 
young  woman  is  the  thief.  I  am  not  a  magistrate  for  nothing, 
and  I  know  the  whole  r.at  hole  of  them  pretty  well  by  now. 
Keep  your  eyes  open,  Lady,  and  I'll  wager  my  best  that  you'll 
find  her  out  before  long.  She's  no  good,  that  girl ;  and  my 
word  is  '  Troop. ' " 

"  You  might  express  your  word  with  a  little  more  refine- 
ment, Mr.  Hamley,"  said  his  wife  primly ;  "  your  counsel  is 
always  valuable,  but  I  cannot  say  I  always  admire  the.  manner 
in  which  you  give  it." 

"  Matter  goes  before  manner,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  sentontionsly; 
"  and  them  as  has  a  rough  diamond  need  not  be  ashamed  of  it 
because  it  ain't  polished.  A  diamond's  a  diamond,  rough  or 
Bmooth ;  that  is  what  I  say,  and  I  think  I  am  not  so  far  out." 

"  You  might  attend  a  little  more  to  my  instructions,  I  think," 
said  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  '  Them  as  has' — '  ain't' — how  often  I  have 
told  you  of  these  errors  1 " 

"  Beg  pardon,  Lady ;  won't  do  it  again  till  next  time,"  Mr. 
Hamley  answered  jocularly.  "He  is  a  bad  boy,  I  daresay; 
but  he  isn't  bad  to  his  missis." 

Mrs.  Hamley  made  no  reply.  She  was  weary  and  distressed; 
glad  to  have  no  shadow  of  case  against  her  niece,  but  sorry  that 
Alice  Garth  should  have  presumably  failed  so  fearfully ;  per- 
plexed what  to  do  between  want  of  proof  and  strong  suspicion. 
She  held  the  crime  in  horror,  and  wished  to  banish  the  crimi- 
nal forthwith,  but  she  was  haunted  by  the  dread  of  accusing 
the  innocent ;  and  yet,  if  not  Alice,  who  aould  it  have  been  ? 

Mr.  Hamley,  however,  cut  the  matter  very  short.  He  was 
not  sorry  to  make  James  Garth  eat  dirt  in  the  face  of  the  con- 
gregation ;  and  to  dismiss  his  daughter  without  a  character  and 
at  a  moment's  notice  was  as  good  a  means  to  this  end  as  any 
that  occurred  to  him.  The  next  morning  then,  he  summoned 
Alice  into  the  awful  sanctuary  of  his  library,  and  without  a 
word  of  reproach  or  explanation,  handed  her  her  wages,  salary, 
and  board  wages,  calculated  to  a  fraction,  for  the  next  month, 
and  told  her  to  pack  up  her  boxes  and  be  off  before  the  clock 
struck  twelve. 

She  was  a  pretty,  fair-haired,  delicate  girl,  with  large  light- 
grey  eyes  and  large  pupils ;  a  nervous  girl,  with  a  spirit  proud 
of  her  honesty,  proud  of  her  fair  fame,  and  a  lady  in  her  degree. 


A  MYSTERY.  279 

She  was  warmly  attached  to  her  goed-natured  young  mistress, 
and  passionately  fond  of  her  father ;  a  girl  as  pure  in  mind,  as 
refined  in  feeling,  and  as  incapable  of  low  vice  as  if  she  had  been 
a  duke's  daughter ;  and  this  sudden  dismissal  struck  her  at  all 
points.  What  would  her  father  say  ?  What  would  the  world 
think  ? 

Quivering  with  nervous  pain,  she  asked  in  a  suffocated  voice: 
"  What  is  this  for,  sir  1 "  her  poor  hands  clasped  in  each  other 
and  her  sensitive  face  blanched  and  drawn. 

Mr.  Hamley  waved  his  hand.  He  did  not  look  up.  ^FTe 
did  not  like  to  give  pain  to  women,  especially  pretty  young 
women,  so  he  did  not  care  to  look  at  the  pitiful  face  which 
he  knew  was  looking^so  beseechingly  into  his.  Had  she 
been  a  lady  indeed,  he  could  not  have  done  it;  but  a 
maid-servant — that  was  different.  Mr.  Hamley  was  not  the 
man  to  fly  in  the  face  of  Providence  and  blaspheme  caste  ; 
and  it  was  scarcely  necessary  for  the  master  of  Abbey  Holme 
to  trouble  himself  about  the  sorrows  or  the  wrongs  of  a  yeo- 
man's daughter,  his  paid  and  hired  servant.  Still  he  did  not 
care  to  look  at  her. 

"  I  make  no  remark,"  he  said ;  "  I  say  nothing.  We  may 
have  suddenly  resolved  to  alter  our  establishment ;  a  thousand 
things  may  have  happened.  The  upshot  that  concerns  you  is 
— here  is  your  money  and  you  must  go." 

It  was  beating  against  a  stone  wall  to  stay  then  and  try  to 
soften  Mr.  Hamley ;  he  had  set  his  face  like  a  flint,  and  had  he 
been  Khadamanthus  in  person  he  could  not  have  been  more  im- 
penetrable, more  immovable. 

One  eager  gaze  into  the  coarse  fixed  face  convinced  her. 
Gathering  up  her  pride  through  all  her  sick  despair,'  without  a 
word  she  turned  away  with  a  dazed  expression  like  one  sud- 
denly brought  from  darkness  to  the  light,  and  went  out  stag- 
gering.. Patricia  was  crossing  the  hall  as  she  came  out  of  the 
study,  holding  on  by  the  wall  and  creeping  round,  almost  un- 
able to  drag  herself  along. 

"Alice!  what  is  the  matter]"  she  cried,  laying  her  hand  on 
the  girl's  arm. 

Alice  looked  as  if  she  did  not  understand  her  ;  and  Patricia 
seeing  that  something  was  gravely  wrong,  and  frightened  at  her 
face,  took  her  upstairs  into  her  own  room,  more  than  half  carry- 


280  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

ing  her,  and  placed  her  in  the  easy-chair  she  herself  so  much 
despised  ;  then  she  bathed  her  face  and  made  her  drink  some 
water,  and  by  degrees  got  the  story  from  her. 

Story  indeed  there  was  none ;  simply  the  bare  uncompromis- 
ing fact  of  a  sudden  dismissal  without  cause  of  complaint  or 
reason  assigned. 

"  It  is  an  infamy  ! "  cried  Patricia  warmly.  "  Mr.  Hamley 
is  a  monster !  But  you  must  not  mind,  dear  Alice,  good  Alice  ! 
You  will  find  friends,  and  he  will  never  have  a  blessing ! 
Here  ! "  she  said,  as  a  sudden  thought  struck  her  ;  "  take  a 
note  to  Miss  Fletcher  and  see  what  she  says.  Whatever  she 
says  will  be  right,"  she  added,  with  the  relieved  look  of  one 
•  who  has  found  a  way  of  escape  in  a  <Hfficulty,  and  a  sure  guide 
in  danger. 

She  sat  down  and  wrote  a  rapid  little  note  to  her  friend, 
begging  her  to  see  Alice  Garth  and  to  talk  to  her  and  comfort 
her ;  saying  that  she  was,  a  good  girl  and  had  no  faults,  and 
ought  not  to  have  been  sent  away.  After  which  she  emptied 
her  purse  into  the  lap  of  tSe  disgraced  maid,  who  hated  to  take 
her  money  for  many  reasons,  but  was  fain  for  the  greater  good 
there  is  sometimes  in  compliance  than  in  self-assertion  ;  and 
for  her  farewell  she  put  her  arms  round  her  neck  and  kissed 
her  as  she  might  have  kissed  a  sister  ;  which  opened  the  founts 
and  sent  poor  Alice  into  a  fit  of  crying  that  culminated  in 
hysterics,  and  taxed  both  Patricia's  skill  and  patience. 

If  Aunt  Hamley  had  only  known  that  her  niece  had  kissed 
a  servant !  Of  a  truth  Miss  Fletcher's  democratic  example  was 
bearing  fruit  1 

Bt^t  Mr.  Hamley  had  his  own  trial  to  bear  after  this  sudden 
assumption  of  domestic  power.  Mrs.  Hamley,  who  never  al- 
lowed interference  in  her  kingdom,  made  his  life  a  burden  to 
him  for  days  and  weeks.  Bignold,  her  maid,  who  had  to  work 
double  tides — dear  Dora  being  utterly  incapable  of  dressing 
herself,  and  Patricia  with  the  best  will  in  the  world  not  being 
sufficiently  deft  to  help — in  her  turn  made  her  mistress's  life  a 
burden  to  her;  and  all  Dora's  tact  and  self-control,  and  natural 
good  nature  were  taxed  to  the  utmost  to  keep  the  tiring-woman 
tolerably  civil  or  efficient.  It  was  a  hard  time  for  them  all,  the 
innocent  as  well  as  the  guilty  ;  but  Mr.  Hamley  took  care  not 
to  show  he  felt  the  ground-swell  that  he  had  raised,  and,  io 


A  MYSTERY.  281 

his  malicious  glee  at  having  wounded  James  Garth  through  his 
daughter,  bore  with  the  Lady's  pin-pricks  like  a  stoic.  They 
were  cheap  at  the  price,  he  thought.  Perhaps  if  he  had  known 
that  Catherine  Fletcher  had  taken  Alice  into  her  service  out  of 
hand,  not  letting  her  go  home  even  for  an  hour,  but  adopting 
her  then  and  there  without  enquiry  as  to  why  she  was  dis- 
missed, and  without  the  formality  of  asking  for  her  character, 
he  would  not  have  thought  his  daily  annoyances  so  cheap. 
There  would  be  a  breeze,  as  he  phrased  it,  when  he  came  to 
know  it. 

Not  that  Miss  Fletcher  much  regarded  the  chance  or  the 
reality  of  a  breeze,  when  the  question  was  one  of  kindness  or 
conscience.  She  believed  in  Alice  whom  she  had  known  from 
childhood;  and  when  the  girl  told  her  with  tears  that  she  was 
entirely  ignorant  of  any  cause  whatever  why  she  should  have 
been  dismissed,  that  she  had  done  nothing,  said  nothing,  been 
just  as  she  always  was,  and  that  the  whole  affair  was  a  mystery 
from  beginning  to  end,  that  no  shadow  of  reason  had  been  as- 
signed, and  no  complaint  of  anything  wrong  in  the  house  which 
might  have  been  fastened  on  her  made  public,  Catherine  ac- 
cepted her  statement  implicitly. 

"Take  off  your  bonnet,"  she  said,  "  and  stay  here.  You 
have  come  at  the  right  time.  I  am  wanting  a  cook,  for  Jane  is 
to  be  married  soon — is  only  waiting  indeed,  till  I  am  settled 
with  her  successor.  You  cannot  cook,  you  say  1  Never  mind ! 
I  will  teach  you.  Lady's  maid  or  parlour-maid  or  whatever 
you  may  be,  Alice,  you  are  a  woman  first  of  all,  and  therefore 
ought  to  know  how  to  cook,"  she  added  smiling.  "A  woman 
who  cannot  cook  is  like  a  man  who  cannot  handle  a  tool ;  a 
helpless  creature  with  only  half  her  faculties.  There  is  noth- 
ing like  being  able  to  do  everything ;  so  now,  my  dear,  you  are 
engaged  here  as  cook,  and  you  can  go  Tiome  this  evening  and 
tell  your  mother  of  the  change." 


282  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER  XXVI. 

BIDDEN  TO  THE    QUEST. 

ILLTOWN  society,  such  as  it  was,  always  profited  by 
the  advent  of  the  family  at  the  Quest — "  the  Dove- 
dales,"  as  certain  of  the  upper  people  called  them,  with 
a  fine  assumption  of  elemental  equality,  and  a  public  announce- 
ment that  they  considered  themselves  of  the  same  flesh  and 
blood  as  even  an  earl  and  countess ;  or  "  my  lord  and  lady," 
as  others  styled  them,  with  a  reverential  abasement  of  the  inner 
man,  and  a  humble  confession  that  a  nobleman  has  different 
physiological  constituents  from  plain  John  Smith,  and  that  in 
all  the  qualities  which  make  up  womankind  my  lady  the  coun- 
tess is  not  the  same  kind  of  creature  as  Joan  the  drudge.  Well, 
the  Dovedales  being  human  and  not  silly,  were  neighbourly 
people  in  their  way,  and  placed  a  good  deal  of  their  religion  in 
the  exact  performance  of  their  social  duties.  Hence  they  stir- 
red up  the  society  about  Milltown  and  the  adjacent  parts,  and 
gave  oecumenical  entertainments  to  which  all  the  visitable 
people  were  generously  invited. 

This  did  not  prevent  their  being  the  proudest  people  on  the 
face  of  the  earth  for  their  own  parts.  But  their  very  pride 
enabled  them  to  condescend  with  that  perfection  of  art  which 
conceals  itself  ;  and  as  no  amount  of  condescension  could  raise 
others  or  lower  themselves  to  the  same  level,  they  were  always 
gracious  because  never  afraid. 

They  cave  weekly  dinner-parties,  and  had  their  sets  rigidly 
arranged.  And  among  others  they  had  one  set  of  which  the 
Lowes  and  the  Fletchers  formed  part,  and  in  which  this  year, 
for  the  first  time,  the  Hamleys  were  invited.  This  was  the 
most  democratic  thing  the  Dovedales  had  ever  done  ;  but  even 
they  felt  themselves  compelled  to  float  with  the-incoming  plu- 
tocratic tide,  and  pay  their  homage  to  wealth  when  they  met 
it.  And  as  Mr.  Hamley  had  the  reputation  of  being  even 
richer  than  he  was — furiously  rich,  some  one  said — and  as  Mrs. 


BIDDEN  TO  THE  QUEST.  283 

Harhley  at  all  events  was  a  gentlewoman  by  birth,  the  demo- 
cracy involved  in  the  invitation  was  reduced  to  a  minimum, 
and  what  was  left  was  exalted  into  a  virtue  by  that  sacred 
shibboleth,  "  the  obligations  of  our  position."  Wishing,  how- 
ever to  get  as  much  pleasure  out  of  their  virtue  as  might  be, 
they  formally  asked  the  two  pretty  girls  as  well  as  the  elders,  • 
and  took  care  to  have  their  particular  Milltown  set  on  a  day 
when  only  a  few  nobodies  were  staying  at  the  Quest ;  who 
nevertheless  were  nobodies  with  names  and  places,  and  thus 
made  a  show  for  the  dazzling  of  the  natives.  Generally  the 
fine  ladies  staying  there,  not  being  bound  to  condescension  by 
any  exigencies  of  local  position,  took  no  active  part  in  these 
democratic  feasts  of  sacrifice.  They  looked  critically  at  the 
women,  whom  they  invariably  pronounced  bad  style ;  and 
though  they  might  have  been  friendly  enough  over  the  vol-au- 
vent  and  the  chartreuse  with  the  gentlemen  belonging,  kept 
aloof  in  the  drawing-room  when  they  had  to  remember  their 
dignity  and  what  was  owing  to  themselves.  But  this  is  the 
way  with  women.  They  will  flirt  to  shamelessness  with  Dick, 
but  they  will  not  know  Mrs.  Dick.  "  The  men  might  pass, 
but  it  is  those  badly-dressed  women  who  are  so  dreadful ! " 
they  say  among  themselves  when  discussing  their  social  in- 
feriors. And  they  are  right,  according  to  the  register  of  their 
standards. 

It  was  the  fine  gentlemen  who  did  all  the  work  \  who  over- 
looked the  immorality  of  an  exaggerated  pattern  or  a  last  year's 
mode,  and  brought  down  their  finery  to  the  lower  level,  like  so 
many  Apollos  among  the  goatherds,  or  Crishnas  consorting 
with  the  Gopias.  Still  there  was  fun,  if  of  a  mild  kind,  to  be 
had  out  of  certain  of  the  provincial  Sampsons ;  and  it  was  antici- 
pated to-day  that  Mr.  Hamley  would  be  a  rich  mine.  For  all 
the  outside  varnish  with  which  his  wife  had  so  diligently 
sought  to  overlay  him  these  fifteen  years,  the  stuff  beneath  was 
as  coarse  as  ever ;  and  the  varnish  had  the  habit  of  not  sticking, 
but  of  coming  off  in  bursts  and  showing  the  original  grain  as 
clearly  as  if  it  had  never  been  brushed  on  at  all.  The  owner 
of  Abbey  Holme  was  notorious  in  his  own  way ;  but  gilding 
goes  farther  than  varnish  in  these  days,  and  even  the  Dove- 
dales  condoned  the  coarseness  of  the  grain  for  the  sake  of  the 
gilt. 


284  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

It  was  not  a  pleasant  surprise  to  either  when  the  Lowes  and 
the  Hamleys  met  in  the  drawing-room  of  the  Quest.  Hitherto 
Colonel  Lowe  had  regarded  this  as  the  one  inviolable  temple 
which  the  old  shoeblack  of  Abbey  Holme  would  never  be  per- 
mitted to  penetrate.  If  he,  as  one  of  the  leading  men  of  the 
district,  had  felt  bound  to  recognise  him,  as  a  superior  being 
might  recognise  the  inferior,  that  was  a  different  thing  from 
being  classed  with  him  as  equals  together  by  one  who  was 
superior  to  both — bracketed  as  social  equivalents,  and  fit  com- 
panions in  the  same  harness.  He  felt  the  invitation  of  his 
enemy  as  an  insult  to  himself,  and  hoped  some  blessed  chance 
might  occur  which  would  give  him  the  opportunity  of  putting 
a  spoke  in  the  wheel  of  the  Hamley  car  of  triumph,  and  bring- 
ing him  to  the  ditch  and  the  dust. 

On  his  side  Mr.  Hamley  would  rather  that  Colonel  Lowe 
had  only  heard  of  his  invitation,  not  been  there  to  witness  his 
acceptance.  Not  that  he  cared  much  about  him ;  but,  all 
things  considered,  it  was  awkward,  and  we  do  not  go  out  to 
dine  with  earls  and  countesses  to  be  annoyed.  If  we  are  to 
have  a  helping  of  gingerbread,  in  mercy's  name  let  us  have  our 
share  of  gilt  undefaced  !  Nevertheless  Mr.  Hamley  bore  him- 
self with  commendable  propriety ;  and  when  he  came  up  the 
long  drawing-room  with  his  wife  on  his  arm,  and  the  two  pretty 
girls  at  his  heels,  and  made  his  parabolic  bows,  the  coolness 
with  which  he  ignored  the  Colonel  and  his  son  would  have 
done  credit  to  the  most  veteran  diplomatist. 

Perhaps  the  young  people  suffered  the  most.  Some  weeks 
had  elapsed  now  since  Mr.  Hamley  had  given  his  ultimatum  so 
distinctly  to  Sydney,  and  husband  and  wife  had  kept  apart  since 
Dora's  last  secret  issue  with  Mrs.  Hamley's  roll  of  ten  bright 
shining  sovereigns  in  her  pocket.  Twice  had  Sydney  thrown 
gravel  up  to  the  window,  and  hooted  with  such  artistic  perfec- 
tion as  to  madden  the  neighbouring  owls;  but  Dora  never 
"  showed."  She  was  getting  frightened  since  Mr.  Hamley's 
seizure  and  Patricia's  discoveiy.  She  was  getting  frightened, 
too,  of  Sydney  himself,  now  that  he  had  begun  to  press  her  for 
money  ;  so  she  did  the  best  she  could  to  keep  him  quiet  and  in 
good  humour  by  writing  pretty  little  notes  which  she  smuggled 
into  the  post  somehow,  generally  only  after  she  had  intrigued 
and  manoeuvred  to  an  extent  that  might  have  saved  a  kingdom. 


BIDDEN  TO  THE  QUEST.  285 

And  above  all,  she  and  Patricia-  had  seen  Lord  Merrian  some 
three  or  four  times  ;  and  she  had  taken  to  herself  the  several 
accidents  which  had  brought  them  together,  and  had  spent 
much  time  in  brooding  on  possibilities,  could  the  past  be  un- 
done or  safely  denied. 

The  meeting,  then,  was  by  no  means  pleasant  for  any  one  ; 
and  it  took  all  the  tact  and  good  breeding  of  the  belligerents 
not  to  show  that  Cragfoot  and  Abbey  Holme  had  "  cut,"  and 
that  the  Quest  was  less  a  nest  where  doves  were  cooing  than  a 
field  where  dogs  would  fight  if  they  dared. 

It  would  be  useless  to  give  an  Homeric  catalogue  of  the  guests, 
or  to  designate  their  places.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  Mr. 
Hamley  was  in  the  second  place  of  honour  by  the  Countess ; 
and  that  Sydney  had  been  told  off  to  Patricia,  but  had  on  the 
other  side  of  him  Miss  Manley  with  her  indefinite  hair,  her 
weak  eyes,  her  freckles,  and  her  camel's  lip,  her  long  waist, 
thin  shoulders,  and  five  thousand  a  year.  Immediately  oppo- 
site, Lord  Merrian,  between  Mrs.  Lowe  and  Dora,  <||presented 
youth  between  duty  and  inclination  ;  but  he  was  too  well-bred 
not  to  give  the  chief  honours  to  the  elder  lady  who  belonged 
to  him  by  right ;  in  which  he  showed  himself  a  better  gentle- 
man than  Sydney  Lowe,  who  turned  his  shoulder  to  Patricia 
persistently  and  left  her  to  Dr.  Fletcher  while  he  devoted 
himself  to  Miss  Manley.  He  and  Dora  were  having  a  silent 
duel  across  the  table,  whereby  Lord  Merrian  and  Miss  Manley 
benefited. 

Never  had  Dora  looked  so  pretty  or  behaved  with  such  a 
perfect  imitation  of  real  breeding.  She  was  the  belle  of  the 
table,  not  even  excepting  the  gracious  Countess,  a  woman  of 
the  mature  siren  type,  who  in  last  season's  dresses,  magnificent 
if  no  longer  fresh,  looked  at  forty-five  no  more  than  thirty,  and 
•who  might  well  have  passed  for  the  daughter  of  her  husband 
and  the  elder  sister  of  her  son.  To  be  sure  her  maid  and  the 
morning  saw  what  the  world  did  not ;  but  Tongs  was  a  discreet 
young  woman  whose  sympathies  were  with  pearl-powder,  and 
the  Bond  Street  bills  were  never  published. 

As  for  Patricia,  hers  was  beauty  of  a  kind  which  does  not 
harmonise  so  well  with  the  state  and  glitter  of  a  fashionable 
dinner-table  as  with  heathy  moors  and  whitening  seas.  She 
was  a  nymph,  not  a  belle  ;  and  was  more  at  home  in  the  wild 


286  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

free  country  than  in  an  assemblage  of  jewelled  dowagers  whose 
estimate  of  social  fitness  is  about  as  sharp  as  the  bridge  over 
which  Mohammedan  souls  walk  to  Paradise — Gehenna  yawning 
below.  Set  in  the  midst  of  the  gorgeous  array  that  surrounded 
her,  she  shone  conspicuous  by  the  simplicity  of  her  manner  and 
her  dress,  which  last  however  was  neither  meagre  nor  ungrace- 
ful. The  Countess  was  in  a  millinery  marvel  of  blue  and  gold  ; 
one  of  Worth's  masterpieces  in  decadence,  deftly  caulked  and 
repaired.  Dora  was  in  white  silk — she  looked  best  in  white — • 
cut  very  low  on  her  shoulders,  with  lovely  little  outbursts  of  pale 
pink  in  unexpected  places,  suggestive  of  a  blush  rose — a  maiden 
blush — the  white  petals  of  which  close  round  yet  just  reveal  its 
tender,  flushing  heart.  She  wore  a  single  row  of  large  pearls 
round  her  throat,  and  a  few  blush  roses  peeped  out  coquettishly 
from  among  the  gold  of  her  shining  hair.  At  Colonel  Lowe's 
her  costume  had  suggested  bridal ;  here,  by  Lord  Mercian's 
side,  it  emblemised  wooing.  The  rest  of  the  ladies  were  in  the 
various  shades  of  mauve  and  silver  grey,  pink,  blue,  maize  and 
peacock-green,  usual  to  age  and  complexion ;  M'hile  Patricia  was 
in  a  thin  black  material  made  high  to  her  throat,  where  it  was 
ruffled  with  white.  No  scoldings  and  no  coaxings  could  induce 
her  to  hang  herself  about  with  chains,  submit  to  have  her  ears 
pierced,  pile  up  her  head  with  false  hair  or.underlying  tow,  or  be- 
dizen herself  in  any  of  the  ways  fashionable  at  this  time.  All 
she  could  be  induced  to  do  was  to  allow  a  white  camelia  to  be 
pinned  into  her  rich  brown  hair,  and  to  wear  another  on  her 
bosom.  For  the  rest,  her  dress  had  been  made  by  the  redoubt- 
able Biggs  according  to  Mrs.  Hamley's  instructions.  Hence  it 
included  all  the  due  mysteries  of  frills  and  puffs  with  which 
modern  millinery  assails  art.  For  these  things  she  did  not 
care.  So  long  as  she  might  discard  ornaments  and  trear  her 
gowns  up  to  her  throat,  she  let  them  manage  the  rest  as  they 
would  ;  and  even  Aunt  Hamlej  had  to  be  content  with  a  com- 
promise. 

Perhaps  the  girl's  instinct  was  right  after  all,  thought  Mrs. 
Hamley ;  for  she  certainly  looked  very  distinguished,  even  at 
the  Quest,  and  a  different  stamp  of  girl  from  the  rest.  There 
really  was  something  wonderfully  noble  about  her,  sbje  thought 
again,  watching  her  from  the  extreme  end  of  the' table,  half  in 
admiration  of  her  appearance,  half  in  fear  of  her  behaviour. 


BIDDEN  TO  THE  QUEST.  287 

She  might  have  spared  herself  her  pangs,  for  Patricia  was 
not  sufficiently  at  ease  to  -be  spontaneous,  so  sat  with  a  kind  of 
North  American  Indian's  stillness  and  dignity  of  bearing  which 
to  the  superficial  seemed  the  perfection  of  good  breeding,  but  to 
the  observant  showed  her  unaccustomedness  to  the  full  as  much 
as  the  soubrette's  flush  and  flutter  would  have  done.  She  was 
troubled  in  more  ways  than  one.  She  did  not»iike  to  sit  by 
Sydney  Lowe,  knowing  all  she  knew ;  and  she  did  not  like  to 
see  Dora  look  at  Lord  Merrian  as  she  did.  She  had  certain 
absurd  notions  about  the  sacredness  of  marriage  which  this  kind 
of  transferred  fascination  did  not  suit ;  and  she  felt  as  if  she  was 
responsible  for  all  she  knew,  and  knowing,  condemned.  Then 
she  had  an  uneasy  consciousness  that  certain  mysteries,  of  which 
she  was  ignorant,  were  connected  with  the  arbitrary  choice  of 
spoon  or  fork ;  and  that  she  was  not  so  well  up  in  the  accidence 
of  the  dinner-table  as  might  have  been.  To  be  sure,  she  had 
been  well-drilled  at  Abbey  Holme ;  but  to  a  girl  accustomed  to 
eat  hunches  of  bread  and  meat  standing  on  the  deck  of  a  yacht, 
with  the  tiller-ropes  in  her  hand,  the  nice  minutias  of  a  perfectly- 
arranged  dinner-table  are  troublesome  to  learn  and  difficult  to 
practise. 

For  one  part  of  her  present  discomfort  however,  she  had  but 
little  reason.  Sydney,  as  has  been  said,  turned  his  shoulder  to 
her  from  the  beginning  of  the  meal  to  the  end  ;  and  Miss  Man 
ley's  pale  dun  face  lighted  up  under  his  darker  fires  as  it  had  sel- 
dom lighted  before.  She  took  quite  cheerful  views  of  things  for 
the  whole  two  hours  the  dinner  lasted.  In  general  she  was  of  a 
desponding  turn,  and  thought  life  had  but  little  to  recommend 
it  to  a  wealthy,  young,  unmarried  woman,  morbidly  conscious 
of  her  own  plainness,  haunted  by  a  dread  of  sharks,  deficient  in 
haematine,  and  longing  for  love  but  fearing  lovers.  To  be  taken 
possession  of  by  some  good,  kind  Christian  soul,  who  would  ad- 
minister her  fortune  favourably,  treat  her  personally  with  chiv- 
alrous devotion,  take  interest  in  her  mild  pursuits,  and  walk 
with  her  through  life  hand  in  hand — a  man  to  whom  a  little  bad 
art,  a  little  desultory  reading,  and  a  little  imperfect  botany,  were 
quite  sufficient  recreations — that  was  the  sum  of  her  ambition, 
the  highest  point  to  which  her  visions  reached.  She  had  not 
found  such  a  one  yet,  and  Sydney  Lowe  had  not  quite  the  out- 
side look  of  her  ideal ;  nevertheless,  he  drew  her  magnetically, 


288  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

and  she  expanded  under  his  attentions  like  a  crumpled,  half- 
dead  insect  reviving  under  the  sun. 

But  the  person  who  was  decidedly  the  happiest  of  the  whole 
assembly  this  day  was  Mr.  Hamley.    To  be  invited  to  the  Quest 
had  been  for  years  one  of  the  secret  points  of  his  not  too  elevated 
ambition.     He  remembered,  as  if  it  was  only  yesterday,  when 
he  stood  among  the  obsequious  throng  crowding  the  gates  at 
the  home-coming  of  the  young  earl  and  his  bride.    He  was  out 
of  the  barefooted  stage  then,  six  and  twenty  years  ago,  but  he 
was  still  only  a  clerk  in  the  concern  whereof  he  was  so  soon  to 
be  sole  manager  and  the  prosperous  proprietor.    And  he  remem- 
bered, as  he  sat  there  with  my  lady's  gorgeous  blue  and  gold 
every  now  and  then  rustling  against  his  knees,  how  this  house 
had  been  to  him  like  a  Paradise,  where,  could  he  be  once  ad- 
mitted on  terms  of  equality,  he  should  be  satisfied.     It  would 
be  his  version  of  the  Nunc  Dimittis,  and  he  would  ask  nothing 
more  from  fate  or  fortune.      Indeed,  neither  fate  nor  fortune 
could  give  him  anything  more.     Let  them  but  grant  him  this 
one  crowning  grace,  and  he  would  feel  that  he  had  drained  the 
golden  cup  to  the  last  luscious  drop,  and  left  no  flower  in  the 
Elysian  Fields  unplucked.     So  he  was  satisfied  in  the  present 
as  well  as  in  the  past ;  unctuously,  fully  satisfied  ;  as  he  would 
himself  have  said,  replete  with  happiness.     He  knew  too,  that 
his  being  here  was  disagreeable  to  the  Cragfoot  people,  over 
whom  it  gave  him  a  prospective  advantage  when  the  fitting 
time  should  come ;  which  would  not  be  long  now.     He  had  a 
bill  against  Colonel  Lowe ;  it  had  been  running  for  many  a 
year ;  but  he  thought  he  saw  daylight  and  the  payment  of  his 
pound  of  flesh  ;  and  he  was  pleased,  now  that  the  first  awkward- 
ness had  worn  off  under  the  influence  of  the  wine  and  his  pleas- 
ure at  being  seated  near  the  Countess — a  higher  place  than  the 
Colonel  had  ! — that  they  had  met  as  equals  at  the  Quest  before 
he  had  to  give  his  enemy  that  lesson  he  had  been  waiting  so 
long  to  deliver.     The  possession  too,  of  a  ladylike,  if  aged  wife, 
and  of  "  the  prettiest  girls  out "  as  his  maiden  satellites,  was 
not  without  its  value.     Taken  all  round,  his  lot  was  a  grand  one 
this  night ;  and  he  had  courted  Fortune  with  good  effect. 

Mr.  Hamley  was  a  self-made  man  who  had  a  good  deal  to 
say  about  native  worth  and  all  the  rest  of  it ;  but  he  believed 
in  a  lord  all  the  same ;  and  he  loved  him.  As  he  sat  by  Lady 


BIDDEN  TO  THE   QUEST.  289 

Dovedale  and  flourished  his  large  hands,  with  their  large  dia- 
mond rings  sparkling  and  flashing  in  the  light,  expanded  his 
broad  chest  with  his  elaborately-embroidered  shirt  front,  used 
his  finest  words,  and  showed  his  long  white  teeth,  he  was  alto- 
gether radiant  and  contented,  supple  and  subjugated.  Had 
my  lady  asked  him  to  commit  any  baseness  in  the  world  not 
penal,  he  would  have  wiped  his  lips  and  done  it.  All  the  same 
he  was  trying  to  impress  her  with  the  sense  of  his  own  worth 
as  a  man  and  his  solidity  as  a  money-bag — to  edge  his  big 
shoulder  under  the  delicate  fringe  of  her  feathers,  that  he  might 
force  her  to  recognise  his  claims  to  equality. 

His  version  of  the  family  to  those  of  his  friends  who  were 
not  admitted  to  the  heaven  of  the  Quest,  was,  that  lords  and 
ladies  were  just  like  other  men  and  women  when  you  came  to 
know  them.  And  he  said  it  in  the  tone  of  a  discoverer.  A  deal 
of  nonsense  was  talked  about  the  aristocracy,  he  said,  by  them 
as  had  never  conversed  with  a  live  lord.  Those  as  had  got  be- 
hind the  scenes  knew  better,  and  he  for  one  could  say  there 
was  no  difference  between  them  and  other  people  when  you 
came  to  know  them.  Take  the  Dovedales,  now  ;  my  lord  was 
as  free  and  hearty  as  his  own  brother — not  a  bit  of  nonsense 
about  him,  and  with  his  head  screwed  on  the  right  way  ;  and 
my  lady  was  not  only  a  splendid  creature  to  look  at,  but  as 
affable  and  simple  as  a  child.  He  could  do  anything  with  her 
— just  the  kind  of  woman  he  could  manage,  like  he  didn't 
know  what,  and  twist  round  his  little  finger.  He  mentioned 
"  young  Merrian  "  with  approbation,  though  he  did  not  quite 
like  his  manner  to  young  ladies.  Still,  the  lad  meant  well,  he 
dared  say,  and  at  the  worst  he  was  but  young  yet  and  would 
improve. 

In  spite,  however.,  of  his  own  exceeding  glory,  he  was  not 
over  well  pleased  at  the  young  lord's  evident  admiration  of  dear 
Dora.  Why  could  he  not  tackle  Patricia  1  he  thought,  as  he 
every  now  and  then  came  down  from  his  heights  and  watched 
them  across  the  flowers  and  lights.  If  Patricia  now  could 
catch  Merrian,  he  would  say  grace  over  that  meal  j  but  Dora, 
— no,  he  could  not  part  with  Dora  !  She  was  his  one  ewe  lamb, 
and  not  even  for  the  right  of  calling  across  the  street,  "Hi 
there  !  Merrian  my  boy,  how  are  you  all  1 "  could  he  give  her 
up. 

i 


290  '-"WHAT  WOT'LD  YOU  BO,  LOVE?" 

Had  he  watched  a  little  more  keenly  he  would  have  seen  that, 
though  Lord  Merrian  flirted  with  Dora,  he  was  watching 
Patricia — Patricia  talking  to  Dr.  Fletcher  with  something  of 
her  natural  animation  as  the  dinner  was  drawing  to  a  close, 
and  therefore  the  difficulties  of  manipulation  were  lessening, 
while  Sydney's  persistent  neglect  reduced  him  to  the  rank  of  a 
circumstance  only. 

Lord  Merrian  cared  nothing  for  pretty  Dora  Drummond,  but 
Patricia  had  touched  him  deeply.  She  was  the  first  woman 
who  had  appealed  to  his  nobler  aspirations,  his  higher  being 
— who  had  stirred  his  soul  rather  than  his  blood,  captivated  his 
conscience  and  imagination  rather  than  his  vanity  or  his  senses. 

He  had  seen  the  girl  many  times,  by  that  lucky  kind  of  in 
tentional  accident  which  befriends  young  people  on  the  look- 
out, and  though  always  more  demonstrative  to  Dora,  had  given 
his  mind  most  to  Patricia.  And  the  more  he  studied  her  the 
more  she  fascinated  him.  Nevertheless,  he  played  with  Dora  ; 
and  Dora  did  not  see  through  the  feint.  As  for  Patricia,  she 
understood  no  more  of  the  meaning  there  was  in  the  young  lord's 
eyes  and  tones  than  she  understood  the  meaning  of  Hebrew. 
She  talked  with  him  freely,  and  accepted  him  in  a  fraternal  kind 
of  way  that  was  delicious  in  its  innocent  unconsciousness  ;  but 
the  world  cannot  judge  of  what  it  does  not  see,  and  Mr.  Ham- 
ley  judged  only  like  the  world. 

Three  conversations,  each  having  an  esoteric  meaning  deeper 
than  their  words,  were  going  on  at  the  table  at  the  same  mo- 
ment. Of  the  one,  Lord  Merrian,  speaking  quietly,  took  the 
lead. 

"  Do  you  and  your  cousin  ever  ride,  Miss  Drummond  ?  I 
have  only  seen  you  driving." 

"Sometimes ;  not  very  often ;  not  this  winter  at  all,  since 
Patricia  came ;  but  I  used  to  ride  with  Mr.  Hamley." 

"Walk?" 

"  Occasionally." 

"  Are  you  a  good  walker  1 n 

She  laughed.     "  No." 

"Is  your  cousin  ?" 

"  Oh  yes,  magnificent  1  She  can  walk  as  far  as  a  man.  She 
is  immensely  strong." 


BIDDEN  TO  THE  QUEST,  591 

"  What  a  splendid  place  for  botanizing  the  Long  Field  Lane 
is  ! "  said  Lord  Merrian  innocently. 

"  Yes ;  but  there  are  no  flowers  out  yet,"  answered  Dora, 
just  as  innocently. 

"  Do  you  think  not  1  I  am  going  to  look  for  some  to-mor- 
row," he  returned  in  the  same  simply  indifferent  way.  "Are 
you  fond  of  botany  ? " 

"  Passionately,"  said  Dora,  who  called  all  hawkvveeds  little 
dandelions,  and  who  did  not  know  that  dead  nettles  do  not 
sting. 

"  You  had  better  join  forces  with  me  to-morrow,  you  and 
your  cousin,"  said  Lord  Merrian.  "  We  may  find  some  good 
specimens." 

She  smiled  with  the  sweetest,  most  ingenuous  little  smile  in 
the  world.  No  one  could  have  suspected  that  it  ratified  an 
assignation. 

"  That  would  be  very  nice,"  she  said. 

"  Agreed  1 "  aeked  Lord  Merrian. 

"  If  you  like,'  answered  Dora. 

Opposite,  Sydney,  with  his  shoulders  well  turned  to  Patricia, 
had  brought  his  conversation  with  Miss  Manley  on  to  the 
theme  of  marriage.  He  was  angry  with  Dora  for  her  looks 
and  lispings  to  Lord  Merrian,  and  he  had  a  kind  of  fierce  de- 
sire "  to  pay  her  out." 

"  I  should  not  like  to  marry  any  one  with  money,"  he  said 
to  Miss  Manley,  a  shade  of  melancholy  on  his  handsome  vicious 
face. 

"  No  1 "  she  answered,  playing  nervously  with  her  bread. 

At  this  moment  she  wished  that  she  had  not  five  thousand 
a-year,  but  that  it  stood  in  Sydney  Lowe's  name — he  looking 
at  her  as  he  looked  now. 

"No,  indeed  !  I  should  like  the  woman  I  married  to  be  sure 
of  my  disinterestedness.  If  I  loved  one  with  money  I  should 
like  her  to  put  my  affection  to  some  stirring  test — to  drop  her 
glove  into  the  lion's  den " 

"Oh!  like  De  Lorge ?"  interrupted  Miss  Manley  with  ani- 
mation. She  was  a  sentimental  young  person,  and  fond  of 
poetry  and  romance. 

"  Yes,  like  De  Lorge,"  said  Sydney,  casting  his  intellectual 


292  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

bread  on  the  waters  without  the  faintest  idea  where  it  was 
floating. 

"  But  perhaps  she  might  believe  in  you  without  such  a  test." 

Miss  Mauley  spoke  hesitatingly.  It  seemed  almost  too  bold 
a  thing  to  say,  with  her  heart  beating  as  it  did  against  her 
gaunt  ribs,  and  her  pale-dun  cheeks  flushed — not  becomingly. 

"  That  could  be  only  one  who  knew  me  well,"  said  Sydney. 

Miss  Manley  was  silent ;  but  Dora  read  her  poor,  plain  face 
with  tolerable  accuracy,  just  as  she  herself  said  "If  you  like," 
to  Lord  Merrian. 

At  the  upper  end  of  the  table  Mr.  Hamley  was  discussing 
politics  with  the  Countess. 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  arranging  her  lace  tucker  with  graceful  art ; 
"  Merrian  will  stand  for  the  borough  at  the  next  election.  I 
do  not  anticipate  failure  ;  do  you,  Mr.  Hamley  1" 

Mr.  Hamley  fidgeted.  It  had  been  his  secret  intention  to 
contest  the  borough  himself  at  the  next  election  ;  but  how 
could  he  say  this  to  her  ladyship  at  her  ow$  table,  when  she 
had  honoured  him  too,  as  she  had  done  ? 

"  Me,  my  lady  1  anticipate  failure  ! — by  no  manner  of  means. . 
I  should  think  his  lordship  safe  to  succeed,"  he  said  with  over- 
acted heartinesss. 

"  He  comes  in  on  the  right  side,"  said  the  Countess ;  "  at 
least,"  she  continued  with  her  sweetest  smile,  and  she  had  a 
very  sweet  smile,  "  I  trust  you  will  say  so,  Mr.  Hamley.  A 
Liberal-Conservative,  he  is  prepared  to  accept  all  good  reforms, 
but  resist  mere  innovations  which  would  only  do  harm ;  and 
he  will  keep  down  with  a  strong  hand  noisy  agitators  who 
have  no  one's  good  at  heart  save  their  own." 

These  were  safe  platitudes.  They  defined  nothing  and 
bound  no  man's  conscience ;  but  the  Countess  said  them  with 
unction,  and  as  if  they  were  a  programme  of  the  exactest 
character. 

"  Bravo,  my  lady !  we  must  have  you  up  at  the  hustings. 
You  would  take  the  conceit  out  of  us  men  if  you  were  to  make 
a  speech  to  the  people  just  as  you  spoke  to  me  now  ! "  cried 
Mr.  Hamley,  overflowing  at  every  pore  with  oily  approbation. 

"  You  flatter  me,''  the  lady  said,  smiling  ;  "  and  I  am  glad  to 
find  you  on  our  side.  An  intelligent  person  like  yourself  is  a 
host  at  au  election,  and  such  a  gain  to  the  right  cause  1 " 


BIDDEN  TO  THE  QUEST.  293 

"  I  will  do  my  best  to  secure  Lord  Mercian's  election,"  said 
Mr.  Hamley  proudly.  "And  I  think  I  have  a  little  influence 
in  my  native  town.  A  self-made  man  as  I  am,  my  lady,  you 
see  I  understand  both  sides.  I  know  the  poor  because  I  re- 
member them  when  I  was  one  of  them  ;  and  I  know  the  rich, 
seeing  that  I  have  become  what  I  call  a  rich  man  myself.  I 
shall  consider  it  a  honour  to  work  for  your  ladyship's  son,  and 
we'll  carry  him  in  among  us,  no  fear." 

"  That  is  very  nice  of  you,"  the  Countess  answered.  "  Do 
you  know,  Mr.  Hamley,  I  had  heard  that  you  were  such  a  dread- 
ful Radical  I  was  almost  afraid  of  you  ?  I  thought  that  proba- 
bly you  would  not  come  to  the  Quest  at  all,  if  we  asked  you  ; 
and  you  know  we  poor  sinful  aristocrats  cannot  help  being  born 
with  titles." 

"  Heaven  forbid  you  should  help  it  if  you  could  ! "  exclaimed 
Mr.  Hamley.  "  And  who  could  have  told  your  ladyship  such  an 
infamous  lie  as  that  I  was  a  Radical  1  I  assure  your  ladyship  I 
yield  to  no  man  in  my  love  for  the  respected  institutions  of  our 
venerated  country,  and  I  would  not  see  one  of  them  destroyed  ; 
least  of  all  the  institution  which  the  Earl  and  Countess  of  Dove- 
dale  adorn." 

"  Neatly  said,"  was  his  own  unspoken  comment. 

"I  am  sure  now,  you  never  could  have  been  a  horrid  Radical; 
why  you  are  quite  a  courtier  ! "  said  the  Countess  graciously. 

Mr.  Hamley  laughed  and  spread  out,his  feet  under  the  itable 
and  his  hands  above  it. 

"  Try  me  when  the  election  comes  on,"  he  said,  tossing  off  his 
wine. 

"I  thought  he  would  have  been  more  difficult,"  was  the 
lady's  comment  to  her  husband  when  the  dinner-party  was 
broken  up.  "  But  he  was  too  easy.  He  is  a  dreadful  creature ; 
no  bait  is  too  transparent  for  him,  no  flattery  can  be  too 
coarse." 

"  He  is  a  beast,"  was  the  Earl's  vigorous  reply. 

Nevertheless  these  aristocratic  personages  did  not  disdain  the 
promised  assistance  of  the  beast,  and  thought  his  hand,  how- 
ever coarse  and  unclean,  as  good  as  any  other  for  a  political  leg- 
up  to  their  son. 

Ou  his  side  Mr.  Hamley  swelled  with  satisfaction.  He  had 
been  singled  out  by  my  lady  for  special  honour  and  distinction, 


294 


WHAT  worm  vor  no,  LOVE?' 


and  the  carriage  seemed  hardly  large  enough  to  contain  his 
jubilant  pride.  All  during  the  ride  home  it  was  one  incessant 
round  of  what  my  lady  had  said,  and  what  he  had  said,  and  how 
she  looked,  and  how  he  had  tried  to  impress  her  by  his  looks 
back,  and  what  he  had  eaten,  and  the  beauty  of  the  "  set  out  " 
— but  the  wine  was  "inferior  to  his  own,  he  thought,  and  the 
cheese  was  not  ripe  enough. 

"  We'll  show  them  how  to  do  it,  Lady,  when  we  have  them 
out  at  Abbey  Holme,"  he  said  to  his  wife,  rubbing  his  hands. 
"I'm  a  self-made  man,  earned  sixpence  a  day  once  upon  a  time 
and  lived  on  it ;  but  I'll  give  my  lord  a  glass  of  wine  lie  can't 
match  for  all  the  cobwebs  in  the  Quest  cellars." 

He  was  quite  frisky  in  his  lumbering  elephantine  way,  and 
complimented  his  ladies  enthusiastically  all  round.  He  was 
gracious  beyond  measure  to  Patricia,  to  whom  he  said  pater- 
nally:  "But  you  should  have  talked  more  to  my  young  lord 
than  you  did,  my  dear,  mewiug  yourself  up  with  those  old 
Fletcher  birds !  I  do  not  approve  of  boldfaced  jigs  in  young 
ladies ;  but  Lord  Merrian  deserves  a  little  nice  attention." 

He  did  not  add  that  he  had  taken  occasion  to  inform  Lord 
Merrian,  when  the  ladies  had  withdrawn,  that  he  intended  to 
dower  his  wife's  niece  handsomely  if  she  married  to  his  liking  ; 
but  that  he  had  only  left  his  own  cousin  provided  by  will ; 
which  he  thought  was  doing  the  thing  as  it  should  be  done — 
the  correct  card  outside  and  in! 


THOROUOE. 


CHAPTER  XXVH. 

THOROUGH. 

"HAT  a  lovely  afternoon  ! " 

It  was  Dora  who  spoke,  standing  by  the  drawing^ 
room  window  after  luncheon  ;  her  enthusiastic  ad- 
miration directed  to  a  grey  sky  with  flying  lead-coloured  clouds, 
and  fitful  gleams  of  a  watery,  greenish-yellow  sunlight. 

"  A  lovely  day  ?  my  dear,  you  are  surely  dreaming ! "  said 
Mrs.  Hamley.  "  It  is  as  cold  as  Christmas,  and  looks  as  stormy 
as  November." 

"  But  it  is  a  nice  fresh  day  for  a  walk,"  said  Dora. 

Mrs.  Hamley  stared  at  the  girl,  who  in  general  was  content 
to  sit  close  "  into  the  fire  "  through  the  winter ;  and  who,  when 
she  went  out,  went  out  only  in  a  close  carriage,  well  wrapped 
in  wadded  silks  and  dainty  furs,  with  a  hot  bottle  for  her  feet 
and  a  wolf-skin  for  her  knees,  and  who  even  then  shivered  and 
said  :  "  How  cold  it  is  ! " 

"  Has  Patricia  infected  you  with  her]Jodd  liking  for  snow- 
storms and  east  winds  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  Perhaps  she  has  !  "  laughed  Dora.  "  Evil  communications, 
you  know,  dear.  But  I  cannot  tell  why,  I  have  quite  a  longing 
for  a  walk  this  afternoon.  I  heard  you  tell  Jones  you  did  not 
want  the  carriage,  else  I  should  not  have  asked  you.  But  if 
you  are  not  going  out,  and  have  nothing  for  me  to  do  at  home, 
may  we  take  a  walk  to-day  ?  " 

u  Yes,  certainly,  if  you  like,  my  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley. 
Yesterday's  dinner  at  the  Quest  had  sweetened  her  temper 
divinely.  "  Does  Patricia  want  to  go  1 " 

"  Yes,  that  is  why  I  have  asked  you,"  said  Dora,  without 
blushing. 

She  and  Patricia  had  not  spoken  of  it. 

"  Well,  have  a  nice  little  walk  then — not  too  far ;  and  come 
home  blooming,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  :  "  my  blush-rose  and  my 
— I  am  sure  I  don't  know  what  to  call  Patricia — my  hollyhock^ 
J  think,  she  is  so  tall  and  straight  1 " 


296  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  You  clever  dear  ! "  said  Dora.  "  I  never  knew  any  one  so 
clever  as  you  are.  You  are  so  bright  and  original." 

Mrs.  Hamley  looked  pleased. 

"  There  was  nothing  very  clever  in  that,  pussy,"  she  said. 

"  Oh  yes  there  was  !  "  cried  Dora. 

"  Ah.  that's  because  you  love  me,  you  see,  and  are  prejudiced 
in  my  favour,"  said  Mrs.  Ilamley. 

And  Dora  assented,  and  said  yes,  that  was  true  for  the  one 
part,  but  not  for  all ;  and  love  or  no  love,  she  was  clever  and 
original,  and  a  darling  all  the  same. 

"  Am  I  not  good  to  get  you  this  nice  walk,  you  cross  old 
pet  1 "  asked  Dora,  clasping  her  hands  round  the  arm  of  Patricia 
whom  she  dug  out  of  the  dark  depths  of  the  library. 

"  Yes,  very  good,  Dora,"  said  Patricia,  gravely. 

*  '  Yes,  very  good,  Dora,' "  laughed  Mr.  Hamley's  fair-haired 
cousin,  mimicking  and  exaggerating  the  girl's  rather  sorrowful 
voice.  ( "  Why,  where  have  all  your  smiles  gone  of  late  ?  You 
are  as  grave  as  a  judge,  and  as  cross — oh !  as  cross  as  the  cats, 
as  my  Irish  nurse  used  to  say." 

"lam  not  cross,  Dora." 

"  Yes,  you  are  ;  you  are  so  cross  you  do  not  know  how  to 
look  like  a  Christian,  not  to  talk  of  behaving  like  one  !  Well, 
never  mind  !  Let  us  go  and  get  our  things  on  now,  and  we 
will  talk  as  we  go.  I  say,  miss,"  she  added,  turning  her 
gracious  head  half  over  her  shoulder,  "  you  are  quarrelling  with 
your  best  friend,  and  very  ungrateful  to  her  too,  when  you  go 
on  like  this  to  me !  There  is  no  one  in  the  house  who  cares  so 
much  for  you  as  I  do,  or  who  tries  so  hard  to  make  your  life 
pleasant  and  to  smooth  down  your  thousand  and  one  difficul- 
ties. I  am  always  getting  into  little  troubles  for  your  sake : 
and  for  my  reward  you  sulk  with  me  as  if  I  was  a  monster." 

"  I  don't,  Dora  !  "  cried  Patricia  earnestly. 

Dora  made  a  little  grimace.  Had  Patricia  been  a  man  it 
would  have  been  a  challenge  for  a  kiss.  As  it  was  it  only 
made  the  girl  take  hold  of  her  by  her  two  shoulders,  and  look 
down  into  her  face  sorrowfully  and  lovingly,  while  she  said ; 
"  Oh,  Dora,  you  might  be  an  angel  if  you  chose  !  " 

"  And  I  am,  I  suppose,  a — "  she  coughed — "  instead  ! " 

Patricia  smiled,  and  then  she  laughed. 

"  Perhaps  an  angel  with  one  black  feather  1 "  she  said  j  and 


THOROUGH.  297 

Dora  gave  her  a  playful  push  ;  whereat  they  both  ran  upstairs 
to  dress,  convinced  that  life  was  very  good,  and  that  a  country 
walk  on  this  grey  March  day  was  the  most  charming  thing  the 
world  could  give. 

Long  Field  Lane  was  not  far  from  Abbey  Holme;  about  a 
mile  perhaps  ;  which,  though  a  mere  "  step-over  "  to  Patricia, 
was  an  expedition  for  Dora.  Moreover,  the  one  dressed  in 
simple  single  garments  which  allowed  her  to  keep  cool  or  get 
warm  as  she  liked  ;  the  other  in  multifarious  devices  of  fur  and 
eiderdown,  quilting  and  wadding,  which,  though  making  a 
pretty  picture,  were  hindering.  As  the  time  was  at  hand  when 
Lord  Merrian  said  he  should  be  botanizing  about  the  bare 
hedges,  Dora  was  anxious  to  make  way ;  yet  by  no  means 
anxious  to  keep  her  tryst  heated  or  disordered.  For  the  mat- 
ter of  that  she  never  looked  either,  even  when  on  rare  occasions 
she  felt  her  golden  feathers  ruffled,  and  her  various  artistic  ar- 
rangements out  of  gear.  And  to-day  the  pretty  pink  flush  on 
her  cheeks,  induced  by  the  wind  and  the  walk,  only  made  her 
the  lovelier.  Patricia  too  looked  beautiful.  She  was  still  sor- 
rowful— that  was  the  set  character  of  her  face  now  ;  but  the 
little  playful  brush  with  Dora  had  brightened  her  into  glad- 
ness ;  though  still  and  ever  the  secret  unhappiness  of  her  soul 
broke  through  the  temporary  sunshine ;  and  hers  was  a  face, 
noble  always,  to  which  sorrow  gives  even  a  nobler  expression. 

As  they  turned  out  of  the  main  road  into  the  lane  they  saw 
at  a  little  distance  the  tall,  well  set-up  figure  of  Lord  Merrian 
coming  leisurely  along,  not  botanizing. 

"  Dora,  there  is  Lord  Merrian — how  odd  !  "  said  Patricia, 
suspecting  nothing. 

"  So  there  is  ! "  lisped  Dora.  "  How  odd,  indeed,  as  you 
say." 

But  Lord  Merrian,  who  was  not  naturally  ruse,  for  all  he 
made  Dora  Drummond  his  stalking-horse  from  behind  which 
to  observe  Patricia,  showed  so  little  surprise  at  seeing  them,  met 
them  indeed  with  such  an  expectant  if  more  than  gratified  air, 
that  even  Patricia  was  struck  by  it.  Why  did  he  seem  as  if  he 
knew  they  were  coming  t  as  if  he  had  been  waiting  for  them  ? 
That  Dora  should  have  made  an  assignation  never  occurred  to 
her.  She  would  have  thought  such  an  underhand  manoeuvre 
bad  even  with  Sydney,  and  knowing  all  she  knew  j  but  for 


298  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LO\TE  ?  " 

Dora  to  plot  and  arrange  to  meet  Lord  Merrian  t  Dora ! 
Had  she  suspected  this  she  would  probably  have  abjured  her 
society  for  ever,  and  have  made  herself  miserable ;  between 
hating  the  sin  of  the  friend  she  loved,  and  lamenting  her  ab- 
sence, torturing  herself  far  more  than  the  cause  or  the  person 
merited.  As  it  was,  she  simply  wondered  at  that  quiet  air  of 
expectancy  in  the  young  lord,  and  thought  that  perhaps  he  had 
seen  them  in  some  miraculous  manner  from  a  distance,  and  so 
knew  that  he  should  meet  them. 

"  You  were,  right,  Miss  Drummond ;  there  are  no  flowers," 
he  said,  after  the  fir&t  greetings. 

"  I  thought  none  were  out  yet,"  she  answered. 

"  Only  two,"  said  Lord  Merriau. 

And  Dora  laughed,  while  Patricia  looked  up  and  down  the 
hedge  and  into  Lord  Merrian's  hands  to  see  which  two  he 
meant. 

That  inquiring  look  delighted  him.  Dora  caught  it  too,  and 
thought  "  how  dense " — and  took  honour  to  herself  for  her 
superior  quickness  ;  but  Lord  Merrian  translated  it — "  how- 
innocent  ;  how  perfect  in  its  sweet  unconsciousness ; "  and— 
"  how  knowing ;  how  far  too  clever  ! " 

Nevertheless  he  smiled  at  Dora,  a  little  too  familiarly  per- 
haps for  perfect  breeding  ;  and  then  he  looked  at  Patricia,  and 
.•spoke  to  her  with  a  certain  respect  and  homage  of  tone  and 
manner  very  noticeable  in  its  difference. 

Dora  would  rather  have  had  the  familiarity.  She  did  not 
runderstand  the  other,  and  called  it  coolness ;  but  she  thought 
Lord  Merrian  full  of  friendliness  and  admiration  to  herself,  and 
•she  was  glad  that  she  had  showed  so  well.  She  scarcely  knew 
what  she  was  proposing  to  herself  in  all  this.  She  knew  that 
she  could  not  marry  if  even  she  was  asked  ;  but  it  pleased  her 
to  sail  in  troubled  waters,  managing  her  little  craft  with  such 
consummate  grace  and  skill  that  no  one  should  suspect  her  seas 
were  not  halcyon.  She  had  always  been  an  adept  at  untying 
knots,  and  her  mechanical  aptitude  emblemised  her  mental 
cleverness. 

After  a  while  the  ball  seemed  to  pass  somehow  from  Dora's 
hand  to-day.  In  the  most  natural  manner  possible  Lord  Mer- 
rian brought  the  talk  round  from  conventional  inanities  to 
Deeper  things— from  literary  small  talk  to  moral  principles, 


THOROUGH.  299 

from  newspaper  politics  to  historic  meanings.  And  here  Dora 
was  distanced.  All  she  knew  of  life  was  its  material  well-be- 
ing, its  dainty  food,  its  soft  attire,  the  position  you  held  in 
your  society,  the  dinners  you  gave,  the  carriages  you  kopt.  • 
She  thought  it  was  as  well  to  keep  out  of  doing  wrong  if  you 
could,  and  if  you  could  not,  then  to  be  careful  not  to  be  found 
out.  She  liked  peace,  and  she  supposed  truth  the  right  thing 
to  cultivate  when  possible.  But  as  it  was  not  possible  for  the 
majority,  she  thought  the  art  of  telling  lies  with  coolness  and 
cleverness  the  most  important  of  all  to  learn  betimes.  She 
blamed  those  who  made  the  lies  necessary,  not  those  who  did 
not  dare  to  tell  the  truth  ;  and  when  she  had  come  to  this,  and 
going  to  church  on  Sundays,  and  speaking  softly  to  her  in- 
feriors, and  laying  herself  out  for  the  perpetual  propitiation  of 
the  authorities,  she  had  her  code  complete,  and  held  that  those 
who  wanted  more  were  inconveniently  earnest  or  stupidly 
intense. 

But  where  Dora  was  lost  Patricia  found  herself.  Also  the 
thoroughness  which  Lord  Merrian  lacked  she  supplied.  Lord 
Merrian  was  a  man  with  thoughts  higher  and  nobler  than  his 
life.  He  yearned  for  the  millennium,  and  was  dissatisfied  with 
the  present  worship  of  false  gods  ;  but  he  was  not  one  who 
would  go  forward  to  chain  the  devil,  though  he  faintly  cheered 
on  those  who  did  ;  and  while  he  vilified  the  ritual,  he  never- 
theless carried  his  daily  sacrifices  to  Mammon  with  the  rest, 
contenting  himself  with  lamentation  that  the  world  was  so  bad, 
and  that  so  few  were  found  to  make  it  better.  All  this  was 
very  fine  to  listen  to,  but  very  unsatisfactory  to  the  man's  own 
conscience  and  to  the  more  earnest  of  his  friends.  He  felt  the 
weakness  of  his  position,  and  wished  it  were  otherwise  ;  but  the 
world  had  him  fast  in  its  golden  fetters,  and  he  was  not  strong 
enough  to  break  them — at  least  not  alone. 

Patricia's  nature  was  fashioned  on  a  different  plan.  With 
her  to  believe  and  to  be  were  identical.  She  could  not  lament 
a  wrong  and  give  in  to  it.  The  tongue  to  speak  and  the  hand 
to  do  must  be  in  harmony ;  and  no  golden  fetters  that  the 
world  could  forge  would  be  found  strong  enough  to  bind  her 
back  from  the  upward  path,  however  difficult,  if  once  her  face 
was  set  that  way  arid  she  knew  it  as  her  duty.  So  that  when 
Lord  Merrian,  speaking  especially  to  her,  began  some  of  his 


300  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

well-expressed  and  well-worn  jeremiads  on  the  injustice  of 
society  and  the  sorrows  of  the  poor,  Patricia  turned  to  him  with 
her  strong  practical  impulse. 

"  But  Lord  Merrian,"  she  said,  her  hright  eyes  lifted  to  his 
face,  "you  have  power  to  prevent  all  this  misery  and  injustice 
on  your  own  estates.  If  you  like  you  can  make  your  tenants 
prosperous  and  happy  ;  it  all  depends  on  your  own  will,  and 
how  you  choose  to  employ  your  money  ;  is  it  not  so  1  But 
you  will,  when  you  come  to  reign  at  the  Quest ;  will  you  not  ? " 

"  Ah,  that  is  just  the  difficulty  !  One  person  can  do  so 
little,"  he  said.  "  And  besides,  we  must  not  interfere  with  the 
natural  self-adjustment  of  the  labour  market,"  he  added,  adopt- 
ing the  current  phraseology  to  excuse  the  half-heartedness 
whence  it  takes  its  rise.  "  Say  that  my  father,  or  I,  or  both, 
agreed  to  lower  the  rents,  give  higher  wages  and  better  dwell- 
ings than  our  neighbours — than  indeed  we  find  regulated  by 
the  condition  of  supply  and  demand — we  should  be  doing  an 
injustice  to  those  of  our  brother  landowners  who  would  not, 
or  let  us  say  could  not,  do  the  same  as  ourselves,  and  we  should 
be  opening  a  door  to  all  sorts  of  encroachments  from  our 
tenants." 

"  I  cannot  see  the  first,  and  I  do  not  believe  the  last," 
returned  Patricia.  "  If  you  choose  to  do  what  is  right,  that 
cannot  be  wrong  to  any  others.  They  may  not  like  it  because 
of  the  contrast ;  but  surely  that  does  not  signify !  And  I  can- 
not believe  that  the  poor  would  ask  for  what  they  ought  not  to 
have,  because  they  had  given  to  them  what  they  ought." 

"  I  know  all  this  sounds  the  right  thing  in  theory,  and  it  is 
what  one's  own  heart  dictates ;  but  the  difficulty  is  in  reducing 
one's  aspirations  to  practice,"  said  Lord  Merrian. 

"  No,  not  so  far  as  your  own  tenants  are  concerned,"  said  un- 
compromising Patricia.  "  Look  at  Miss  Fletcher's  houses  ! 
There  you  see  it  put  into  practice ;  and  what  a  pleasure  it  is  to 
go  and  see  the  people  there ! " 

"  But  do  you  hear  what  the  other  Milltown  landowners  say 
of  the  Fletchers  1 "  asked  Lord  Merrian. 

Patricia  looked  up.  "  No  ;  and  I  should  not  care  whatever 
I  heard,"  she  answered  calmly.  "  Do  we  not  know  that  the 
world  always  speaks  against  those  who  do  the  real  right  ?  We 
know  for  ourselves,  at  least  I  do,  how  good  the  Fletchers  are 


THOROUGH.  301 

— they  are  like  angels — and  what  can  it  matter  what  others 
say  1" 

"  You  are  an  able  advocate,  Miss  Kemball,"  Lord  Merrian 
answered. 

He  did  not  know  whether  he  was  quite  pleased  to  hear  her 
praise  of  the  Fletchers  ;  but  as  she  looked  very  beautiful  when 
she  spoke,  and  her  eyes  were  honest  and  tender  with  her 
thoughts,  and  looked  into  him  as  if  he  was  the  cause  and  not 
merely  the  object,  he  made  the  best  of  her  enthusiasm,  and 
accepted  it — transferred. 

"  Am  I  ? "  A  smile  broke  over  her  face.  "  I  should  think  I 
was,  if  I  could  make  any  impression  on  you,  Lord  Merrian." 

"  You  have,"  he  said  in  a  lowered  tone  ;  "  a  very  deep  im- 
pression." 

"  And  your  tenants  will  benefit?  You  will  do  as  the 
Fletchers  have  done,  and  make  them  happy  by  better  treat- 
ment than  your  neighbours  give  ?  You  will,  Lord  Merrian  1 " 

"  Ah ! "  he  said,  and  he  sighed  as  he  spoke  ;  and  sighed 
sincerely,  believing  in  the  phantoms  that  he  conjured  up  for 
himself ;  "  If  only  I  could !  You  do  not  know  how  we  are 
fettered  !  Bailiffs  and  stewards,  and  leases  and  conditions,  and 
above  all,  that  self-adjustment  of  the  labour  market  with  which 
it  is  more  than  doubtful  whether  we  ought  to  tamper — one's 
will  is  so  strong,  but  one's  power  so  weak  ! " 

Patricia  shook  her  head. 

"  No,"  she  said  earnestly.  "  No  one's  power  is  small — it  is 
the  will  to  use  it  that  is  wanting.  Men  in  your  position,  Lord 
Merrian,  can  surely  do  as  they  like.  No  good  can  be  done 
without  trying — now  can  it  1  and  does  not  trying  always  cost 
trouble?  and  doing  what  is  right  when  the  world  does  what  is 
wrong — why  !  it  must  be  hard  and  painful !  But  if  one  will 
not,  and  another  will  not,  how  can  reforms  come  ? " 

"  Yet  it  is  not  always  possible,  even  with  pain  and  trouble, 
to  do  the  right  which  one  would,"  he  answered. 

She  looked  at  him,  and  tears  seemed  near  her  eyes. 

"  Do  you  know  what  you  remind  me  of  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  No  ;  what  ?  "  he  answered,  looking  down  into  her  face. 

"  That  young  man  in  the  Bible  who  went  away  sorrowful 
because  he  had  large  possessions,"  said  Patricia. 

There  was  a  pause.     Her  words  had  struck  a  little  rudely  on 


302  «  WHAT  WOULD  VOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

the  secret  sore  of  her  companion's  Conscience,  and  he  winced 
under  them. 

"  Perhaps  you  are  right,"  he  said  at  length,  and  it  cost  him 
an  effort  to  accept  the  blow  so  magnanimously  ;  "  but  I  think 
I  know  how  my  halting  will  could  be  strengthened."  He  said 
this  almost  as  if  to  himself.  "  But  am  I  really  such  a  half-hearted, 
halting  sinner  in  your  eyes,  Miss  Kemball  ?  "  he  asked  appeal} 
ingly. 

"  I  was  wrong  perhaps  to  say  what  I  did,"  stammered 
Patricia. 

Truth  was  all  very  well,  but  even  truth  need  not  be  offensive, 
And  had  she  not  been  a  trifle  priggish  ? 

"  I  must  say,  dear,  I  think  you  are  very  bold,"  put  in  Dora, 
who  had  sauntered  a  little  way  ahead,  knowing  that  her  dark 
blue  dress  and  chinchilla  trimmings  made  a  pretty  bit  for  the 
foreground,  and  that  the  wind  had  blown  a  tiny  lock  of  gold 
as  a  point  of  colour  against  the  grey  fur.  She  had  been  listen- 
ing to  this  dull  talk  between  the  two,  and  wondering  greatly  in' 
her  own  mind  at  Lord  Merrian's  odd  choice  of  subject  and 
Patricia's  unabashed  speech. 

"  No,  you  are  quite  right,"  Lord  Merrian  said  ingenuously. 
"  We  may  not  like  it,  but  a  true,  brave  word  (Joes  every  one 
good.  The  precious  balms,  you  know,"  smiling  to  Patricia. 

"  You  are  very  good  to  take  me  so  kindly,"  she  said,  looking 
down. 

"  That,  however,  is  not  answering  my  question  ;  do  you 
think  me  so  halting  and  half-hearted  as  you  seemed  to  say  ]  " 

She  did  not  like  being  pressed,  but  she  was  too  brave 
to  deny  the  truth  when  put  to  it. 

"  I  think  you  have  less*  determination  to  do  the  right  thing 
than  you  have  clearness  in  seeing  the  wrong,"  she  answered. 

"  Which  comes  to  the  same  thing,"  said  Lord  Merrian. 

She  blushed. 

"  I  suppose  so,"  she  replied.  "  But  indeed  I  ought  not  to 
speak  as  I  do  ; "  she  then  said,  with  an  eager,  apologetic  tone. 
"I  sometimes  feel  as  if  I  did  know  something  of  right  and  wrong, 
and  then  again  as  if  I  was  the  merest  child,  ignorant  of  every- 
thing." 

"  Not  of  everything,"  he  said,  in  a  soft  voice.  "  Do  you 
never  think  you  have  a  mission  yourself  f " 


THOROUGH.  3u3 

"  I  ?  a  mission  ?  no,  indeed  !"  she  cried.  •*  On  the  contrary, 
I  feel  a  mere  useless  encumberer  of  the  ground,  an  excrescence 
belonging  to  no  one,  and  of  no  use  anywhere." 

Lord  Merrian  flushed  like  a  girl.  In  general  his  pale, 
finely-formed  face  showed  but  few  changes  of  colour  or  expres- 
sion. It  was  always  a  slightly  sad  face  ;  statuesque,  and  cast 
in  a  tragic  mould  of  the  first  degree ;  and  he  cultivated  still- 
ness ;  but  now  it  became  rudely  coloured,  while  every  part  of 
it  seemed  to  speak. 

"  You  will  find  your  mission  some  day  perhaps,"  he  said  in 
a  low  voice.  "  The  mission  of  strengthening  a  weak  will  and 
making  a  half-hearted  life  a  whole  one.  Found  any  flowera 
yet,  Miss  Drummond  1 " 

"  No,"  said  Dora,  turning  round  with  a  pretty  smile.  "  Have 
you  ? " 

By  this  time  they  had  wandered  as  far  as  the  gate  leading 
into  the  farm  enclosure.  A  stout  lady  in  black  was  standing 
by  the  furze  stack  talking  to  Mrs.  Garth. 

"  Oh,  there  is  Miss  Fletcher ! "  cried  Patricia. 

Without  thinking  of  what  she  was  doing — if  she  had  thought 
perhaps  she  would  have  done  it  all  the  same — she  started  off 
running. 

"  My  own  dear  ? "  she  said,  putting  her  arms  round  the 
kind,  broad,  handsome  woman.  "  How  glad  I  am  to  see  you  ! " 

"  Why,  where  have  you  come  from,  child  ? "  said  Miss 
Fletcher  laughing. 

"  Lord  Merrian  and  Dora,"  answered  Patricia,  looking 
backwasds. 

Lord  Merrian  and  Dora,  yes  ;  but  some  one  else  too  ;  for 
riding  down  the  lane,  examining  again,  as  so  often  before,  the 
fields  which  were  so  soon  to  be  his  own,  Mr.  Hamley  suddenly 
appeared  on  the  scene  and  joined  the  two  just  as  they  were 
passing  through  the  gate. 

"  Heyday  ! "  he  said  jocularly  ;  but  he  was  not  quite  pleased 
at  what  he  saw ;  "  are  the  skies  a-going  to  fall  ?  Miss  Drum- 
mond out  on  her  ten  toes  so  far  from  home,  and  you  too,  my 
lord — morning,  my  lord — padding  the  hoof  ?  Have  you  got 
any  of  the  carriages  hereabouts,  Dora  !  " 

"  No,"  said  Dora,  with  a  graceful  little  greeting  by  which 
she  managed  to  convey  to  Mr.  Hamley  her  exceeding  pleasure 


304  "  ^HAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ? " 

at  this  chance  meeting,  and  yet  not  cast  in  her  lot  with  him 
visibly  to  Lord  Merrian,  who,  she  was  aware,  detested  him. 
"  We  came  out  for  a  walk,  Patricia  and  I,  and  met  Lord  Mer- 
rian in  the  lane." 

"  I  am  sure  it  is  very  good  of  his  lordship  to  escort  two  such 
troublesome  young  ladies,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  still  jocular. 
"  Did  you  find  them  very  bad  to  manage,  my  lord?  I'll  go 
bail  you  did  for  one  ! — but  this  little  mouse,  she  gives  no 
trouble  to  any  one.  That  is  why  she  is  so  useful  at  home,  and 
why  we  are  never  going  to  part  with  her,  hey  Dora  1 " 

"  I  have  found  both  charming,"  Lord  Merrian  answered, 
coldly. 

"  Ah  I  and  there's  Miss  Fletcher  I  see  talking  to  Goody 
Garth.  Why,  all  Milltown  has  made  its  comether  at  Long 
Field  1  •  I'll  ride  in  and  pay  my  compliments.  Coming,  my 
lord  ? — after  your  lordship." 

Mr.  Hamley  would  have  done  better  to  Lave  stayed  outside 
the  farm  gate,  for  Mrs.  Garth  was  just  then  in  a  burning  state 
of  indignation  against  him  and  his,  which  Catherine  Fletcher 
was  doing  her  best  to  soothe.  She  had  known  of  her  daughter's 
going  suddenly  from  Abbey  Holme  to  the  Hollies,  but  not 
until  last  evening  of  the  reason  why  the  exchange  had  been 
made.  She  had  thought  the  ladies  and  Alice  had  cooked  it  up 
among  them,  she  said,  partly  to  oblige .  Miss  Fletcher,  and 
partly  because  she  supposed  Alice  had  been  bitten  with  a  sudden 
mania  for  the  spit  and  the  stewpan  ;  and  it  was  only  last  even- 
ing that  she  had  got  the  whole  story  out  of  the  girl,  founded 
on  her  unsuspicious  question  :  "  Well  Alice,  and  when  did  you 
see  the  old  lady  and  Miss  Drummond  last  t  " 

She  was  furious  ;  as  perhaps  was  only  natural  A  mother 
who  had  brought  up  her  daughter  in  the  way  of  honesty  and 
virtue,  and  whose  temper  was  as  hot  as  her  pride  was  strong, 
was  not  likely  to  accept  very  quietly  a  method  of  dismissal 
which  of  itself  was  as  damaging  as  any  accusation.  Indeed, 
more  damaging  ;  inasmuch  as  it  was  an  intangible  injury — one 
that  could  not  be  met,  and  consequently  one  for  which  there 
was  no  redress  and  against  it  no  protection.  She  talked  of 
taking  the  law  of  Mr.  Hamley  ;  of  suing  him  for  libel  and 
damages ;  of  making  him  prove  his  words  ;  arid  all  tin-  rest  of 
it.  She  talked  passionately,  unreasonably,  wildly,  like  an  angry 


THOROUGH.  305 

woman  and  an  insulted  mother  ;  and  Miss  Fletcher's  wiser 
words  at  first  fell  unheeded.  She  was  burning  with  too  fierce 
a  fire  of  wrath  to  be  able  to  receive  them.  By  degrees  how- 
ever, the  clearer  brain  took  the  customary  power  over  the 
excited  one,  and  Mrs.  Garth's  passion  began  to  moderate.  She 
was  quite  calm  now,  discussing  her  barn-door  stock  by  the 
furze  stack,  when  Patricia  .ran  in,  and  immediately  after  Dora 
Drummond  and  the  young  lord,  followed  by  Mr.  Hamley  on 
his  prancing  bay. 

And  then  the  old  fire  burst  forth  again,  and  the  outraged 
maternal  instinct  woke  up  to  renewed  fury.  There  was  a 
stormy  scene.  Mrs.  Garth  lost  her  temper,  avd  said  a  few 
hard  truths  crudely ;  Mr.  Hamley  kept  his  dignity.  The  one 
demanded  to  know  the  reason  why  her  daughter  had  been 
dismissed  so  summarily ;  the  other  refused  to  tell  her. 

"  I  have  the  right  to  know  !  "  said  Mrs.  Garth. 

"  And  I  have  the  right  to  refuse,"  replied  Mr.  Hamley. 

"  Is  there  no  law  for  the  poor  against  the  rich — no  justice  in 
heaven  or  earth  ? "  cried  the  mother,  flinging  up  her  hands 
passionately. 

Catherine  Fletcher  touched  her  on  the  shoulder. 

"  Dear  Mrs.  Garth,"  she  said  kindly,  "  you  have  no  such 
heavy  cause  of  complaint  on  the  whole  !  Be  reasonable.  Your 
daughter  passed  at  once  from  Abbey  Holme  to  our  house,  and 
I  do  not  think  any  one  would  consider  that  a  degradation.  She 
has  not  suffered,  and  will  not,  if  you  do  not  yourself  noise  the 
story  abroad.  Then  indeed  she  will." 

"Oh!  passed  to  you,  did  she?"  said  Mr.  Hamley.  "I 
never  heard  of  that.  Pray,  does  Mrs.  Hamley  know  1 " 

"  Not  that  I  am  aware  of,"  said  Catherine  quietly. 

"  You  engaged  her  without  a  character  1 " 

"  Surely  !  1  knew  her  too  well  to  need  one." 

"Peculiar  conduct!"  sneered  Mr.  Hamley.  "Consistent 
with  your  school,  I  suppose?" 

"  With  the  school  of  justice,  and  doing  as  I  would  be  dona 
by,  Mr.  Hamley  ? — I  hope  so,"  was  her  answer. 

"  I  appeal  to  you  two  young  ladies — to  you  Miss  Drummond 
— had  you  any  complaint  against  my  girl  1 "  cried  Mrs.  Garth 
excitedly. 

Dora  lifted  up  her  blue  eye* 
T 


"WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  I  know  nothing  about  it,"  she  said  quietly. 

"Yet  she  was  your  maid,  miss!" 

"  But  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Hamley  are  the  master  and  mistress," 
said  dear  Dora  with  the  sweetest  little  air  of  loving  submission 
imaginable.  "  It  is  not  my  place  to  inquire  into  the  reason  of 
anything  they  choose  to  do ;  still  less  to  object.  They  sent 
Alice  away,  and  as  they  did  not  tell  me  why,  it  would  have 
been  very  unbecoming  in  me  to  ask." 

"That  is  right,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  approvingly.  " If  all 
ladies  were  as  amenable  as  Miss  Drummond,  things  would 
progress  a  vast  sight  better  than  they  do  now." 

"  Did  you  know  nothing,  miss  1 "  Mrs.  Garth  continued, 
speaking  to  Patricia. 

"No,  nothing,"  she  answered  with  girlish  tenderness.  "I 
only  saw  Alice  in  trouble,  and  I  told  her  to  go  down  to  the 
Hollies." 

"  You  told  her,  did  you  ? "  repeated  Mr.  Hamley  fiercely* 
Then  he  looked  at  Lord  Merrian  and  checked  himself.  "  You 
did  right,  my  dear,"  he  said  with  an  effort.  He  thought  it 
would  never  do  to  humiliate  his  wife's  niece  in  the  sight  of  the 
future  Earl  of  Dovedale ;  "  but  you  should  have  consulted 
your  aunt  before  you  took  such  a  step.  Good  impulses,  I  make 
no  doubt ;  but  guod  impulses  have  to  be  ridden  with  the  curb, 
not  given  their  head,  what  say  you,  my  lord  ?  " 

"I  do  not  understand  what  all  this  discussion  is  about," 
Lord  Merrian  replied,  and  looked  at  Patricia. 

"  I  will  tell  you  when  we  go  away,"  said  Dora  confidentially, 
as  if  she  was  speaking  to  her  chinchilla  muff.  "  And  do  let  us 
go,  Lord  Merrian! — this  rnad  woman  is  dreadful!" 

Doubtless  she  was.  A  farm-house  Constance,  with  her  cotton 
gown  bearing  the  stain  of  poverty,  the  soil  of  service,  is  of  no 
interest  to  refined  folk  who  yet  would  probably  weep  quite 
genuine  tears  at  the  sorrows  of  a  stage  Constance  simulating 
royal  grief  cleverly.  Royal  grief  is  a  respectable  kind  of  passion, 
•  and  royal  madness  has  its  especial  power  of  pathos  ;  but  a  rude 
and  homely  woman  of.  the  people  pouring  out  her  sorrows  and 
her  wrongs  in  unclassic  English — refined  folk  see  no  pathoa 
there,  and  only  think  "how  dreadful  !" 

"  I  am  in  a  maze,"  said  Lord  Merrian ;  "  pray  enlighten, 
me."  And  he  and  Dora  moved  towards  the  gate. 


THOROUGH.  307 

Then  the  disintegration  of  the  close-set  group  began.  Mr. 
Hamley  rode  after  Dora,  not  caring  to  let  her  linger  alone  with 
my  lord,  saying  as  his  parting  shot :  "  I  am  sorry  to  see  you 
in  such  a  taking  Mrs.  Garth,  at  what  was  a  duty — a  disagreeable 
but  meritorious  duty — on  my  part." — Miss  Fletcher  shaking 
hands  and  giving  a  few  last  words  of  comfort;  and  Patricia 
shaking  hands  too,  and  adding  her  fresh  young  sympathy  to 
her  friend's. 

"  Don't  grieve  so  much,  dear  Mrs.  Garth,"  she  said  kirxlly. 
"  No  one  thinks  a  word  about  Alice  to  her  disfavour — no  one 
can  ;  and  she  is  better  off  where  she  is  ! " 

Which  Mrs  Garth  in  her  own  heart  knew  to  be  true. 

Lord  Merrian  watched  Patricia's  leave-taking  with  the 
farmer's  wife.  He  felt  a  certjfin  odd  distaste  mingled  ^ith 
admiration  for  her  friendly  action. 

"  She  is  gloriously  thorough,"  he  said  to  himself ;  "buf — I 
wonder  if  I  should  like  it  in  my  wife  !  Surely  things  car  be 
carried  too  far,  and  we  ought  to  draw  the  line  somewb  ^re. 
Ladies  and  common  women  are  not  equals!" 

When  they  reached  home  Patricia  had  more  to  bear  f~om 
her  aunt  than  Mr.  Hamley's  mild  expostulation  at  *.he 
farm.  She  was  really  as  angry  as  Mrs.  Garth  had  been ;  hut 
she  expressed  herself  in  better  English,  and  she  did  *u>t 
gesticulate  so  much. 

"  That  girl  is  always  doing  something  to  irritate  and  up-et 
me !"  she  said  to  Dora  peevishly.  "Just  now,  when  I  was  so 
well  and  cheerful,  to  be  annoyed  like  this  ! " 

And  Dora  purred  a  soothing  assent ;  by  no  means  seeking  to 
defend  or  justify  Patricia,  by  which  she  would  have  merely 
made  Mrs.  Hamley  angrier  than  before,  to  the  inclusion  of  brtr- 
self  in  the  roll-call  of  the  disgraced ;  but  when  the  fitting 
moment  came  she  led  the  conversation  on  to  Lord  Merrian ; 
telling  Mrs.  Hamley  of  the  attention  he  had  paid  Patricia  fo- 
day  ;  and  how  she  was  sure  he  liked  her  ;  and,  with  a  snv'e 
dimpling  her  fair  face  and  her  blue  eyes  watching  keenJ-«r, 
what  a  delightful  thing  it  would  be  if  he  really  did  take  a  fan^y 
to  her  and  make  her  Lady  Merrian  ! 

The  ruse  succeeded ;  but  only  partially ;  for  even  whiS 
Dora  spoke  Mrs.  Hamley  caught  herself  wondering  why 
Patricia  had  shown  such  friendliness  for  Alice,  who  was  n<H 


308  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOV  E  ?  " 

her  maid  i  Why  indeed  ?  Had  she  compunctions  1  It  seemed 
like  it ;  and  the  thought  shook  the  poor  lady,  heart  and  brain. 
She  went  on  to  reflect  however,  that,  whether  Alice  was  innocent 
or  not,  Catherine  Fletcher  had  acted  with  an  unpardonable 
want  of  ladylike  feeling  in  taking  a  servant  discharged  by  her 
without  a  character ;  and  "  I  will  tell  her  of  it,"  said  Mrs. 
Hamloy,  stiffening  her  back  to  the  brunt.  She  was  of  the 
nature  of  those  who  must  have  a  scapegoat  when  things  go 
wrong ;  and  it  not  being  quite  politic,  with  the  Quest  in  view, 
to  snub  Patricia  over  much,  she  turned  against  Catherine 
Fletcher,  who  could  bear  it. 

So  far  Dora  dealt  kindly  by  her  friend,  and  stood  between 
her  and  her  aunt's  displeasure.  She  was  an  artful  little  woman 
and  abominably  untruthful ;  but  she  was  kind-hearted,  and 
always  ready  to  scheme  and  manoeuvre  to  save  Patricia  as  well 
as  herself ;  provided  she  did  not  burn  her  own  fingers  in  the 
fire,  or  suffer  in  any  way  by  her  advocacy. 


PASSING  IT  ON  809 


CHAPTER  XXVIIL 

PASSING  IT  ON. 

tHE  wolves  were  pressing  round  Cragfoot,  and  Sydney's 
more  expensive  enjoyments  were  fain  to  be  flung  one 
after  the  other  as  successive  sacrifices  wherewith  to  stave 
off  their  worst  attacks.  When  debts  of  honour — losses  on  the 
turf  and  the  like — swallowed  up  all  the  available  cash,  and 
money  was  wanting  for  interest  and  house-bills,  it  was  only  to 
be  expected  that  the  younger  man  should  have  to  share  in  the 
general  discomfort,  and  be  asked  to  contribute  his  tale  of  sur- 
renders with  the  rest.  But  this  was  just  what  he  would  not  do. 
He  was  one  of  those  men  to  whom  happiness  consists  in  personal 
pleasure,  and  without  money  he  saw  no  good  in  living. 

Life  at  this  time  was  thorny  for  Sydney  Lowe.  He  was  as 
passionately  in  love  with  DoYa  as  he  could  be  with  any  one  ; 
but  he  was  most  of  all  in  love  with  himself.  And  of  the  two 
he  found  it  harder  to  give  up  his  own  pleasure  than  her.  Since 
things  had  taken  their  present  untoward  turn  he  bitterly 
repented  his  rash  step,  and  longed,  as  the  weak  and  wilful  do, 
to  be  able  to  unravel  what  he  had  so  thoughtlessly  knit  up,  to 
destroy  what  he  had  so  firmly  built.  It  was  to  no  good,  how- 
ever, that  he  fumed  and  fretted.  Dora  was  his  wife  by  the 
laws  of  both  Church  and  State ;  and  neither  his  father's  ruin 
nor  Mr.  Hamley's  close-fistedness  could  alter  that  fact,  undo 
that  tie. 

And  now,  to  make  matters  worse,  there  had  sprung  up  a 
certain  coolness  between  himself  and  his  wife  which  robbed 
him  of  all  the  good  of  his  folly.  It  made  his  heart  beat  with  an 
odd  exultant  pride  when  he  reflected  that  this  pretty  creature, 
the  pride  of  Mr.  Hamley's  life,  watched  and  guarded  and 
desired  and  coveted  at  all  points,  had  laughed  with  him  at  the 
close  defence-work  set  about  her,  and  that  he  had  carried  her 
oft'  out  of  their  hands  and  from  under  their  very  eyes.  But 
over  this  exultant  pride  of  late  had  come  a  kind  of  ponscioua- 


310 

ness  that  something  was  amiss,  that  Dora  was  not  as  she  had 
been. 

There  had  been  no  meeting  between  them  since  the  dinner 
party  at  the  Quest,  and  already  the  lengthening  days  had 
brightened  into  spring.  There  were  no  means  of  communicat- 
ing with  her  against  her  will ;  and  he  could  not  make  their 
relations  public,  even  for  the  gain  of  making  them  open  and 
continuous,  at  the  cost  of  ruin  ;  ^which  would  be  the  price  he 
should  have  to  pay.  She  was  growing  mysterious  too  ;  hint- 
ing at  better  arrangements  if  they  had  never  met  at  St. 
Pancras,  and  writing  melancholy  little  notes,  which  distracted 
him  on  more  accounts  than  one,  and  set  him  thinking  of  many 
things.  '  He  had  not  the  slightest  suspicion  that  she  was 
alluding  to  herself  in  these  potential  better  arrangements,  had 
they  never  repeated  those  fatal  words  behind  the  caryatides. 
He  was  too  young  to  be  doubtful  of  his  own  ability  to  keep 
the  woman  he  had  won  ;  that  kind  of  mistrust  comes  only  with 
experience ;  and  though  jealous  he  had  no  self-diffidence.  No, 
she  meant  for  him,  not  for  herself;  of  that  he  was  quite  sure  ; 
and,  judging  of  her  feeling  by  his  own  knowledge,  she  meant 
•  Julia  Mauley. 

Julia  Manley!  Bad  as  the  exchange  would  be,  woman  for 
flroman,  bow  heartily  he  wished,  now  that  his  father's  impecu- 
niosity  was  pressing  personally  on  him,  that  he  could  make  it ' 
— how  sorrowfully  he  was  obliged  to  'confess  that,  as  Colonel 
Lowe  had  said,  money  does  indeed  make  the  homeliest  visage 
beautiful,  while  the  want  of  it  leaves  Venus  herself  undesirable  ! 

Still,  with  all  these  drawbacks,  he  wanted  to  see  Dora  again. 
He  yearned  for  the  old  fascination  of  her  words  and  ways  and 
looks,  and  wandered  about  the  Abbey  Holme  grounds  at  mid- 
night, to  the  imminent  risk  of  being  taking  for  a  burglar  by  the 
gardeners  when  they  went  to  look  after  their  stoves,  or  for  a 
poacher  by  the  keepers  watching  the  preserves. 

But  more  than  for  the  pleasure  of  looking  into  her  pretty 
eyes  and  hearing  her  sweet  voice,  being  coaxed  while  scolded 
and  petted  while  rebuked,  he  longed  to  see  her  for  a  graver 
reason.  He  had  been  scheming  something  in  that  busy  brain 
of  liis,  and  he  had  decided  that  Dora  should  help  him.  So  it 
came  about  that  she  too,  wishing  to  keep  him  in  good  humour, 
fearing  laat  he  might  divine  her  thoughts  respecting  Lord  Mer- 


PASSING  IT  ON.  311 

rian,  met  him  as  usual  one  night  in  the  garden ;  and  heard  his 
scheme. 

They  were  sitting  in  the  little  summer-house  where  they  had 
so  often  sat  before,  he  holding  her  in  his  arms  lovingly  while 
he  whispered  his  grand  idea  into  her  ear.  Apparently  it  was 
one  that  distressed  her  greatly ;  for  she  shrunk  and  cried,  and 
said  she  could  not  and  she  would  not,  and  now  tried  indignant 
refusal,  now  pathetic  appeal,  and  now  coaxing  persuasion,  to 
make  him  alter  his  determination  of  implicating  her. 

Sydney  was  immovable.  To  all  her  beseechings  he  answered 
only  in  the  one  strain  :  "  You  are  so  clever,  you  will  not  be 
found  out ;  and  even  if  you  are  you  will  not  be  punished. 
Hold  your  tongue  and  do  as  I  tell  you,  and  no  harm  can  come 
to  you." 

"  You  are  the  most  cruel  wretch  I  ever  saw,"  at  last  said 
Dora  with  energy ;  "  and  I  hate  you  ! " 

Sydney  took  her  by  the  wrists,  twisted  her  round,  and  looked 
into  her  face. 

"If  I  thought  that  I  would  throw  everything  to  the  winds 
to  morrow  ! "  he  cried  fiercely.  "  You  are  my  wife,  and  your 
place  is  with  me  ;  and  if  I  have  to  commit  a  crime,  I  would 
rather  kill  you  than  bo  put  in  prison  for  bigamy  !  " 

"  You  will  be  put  in  prison  for  forgery,  which  is  worse,"  said 
Dora. 

"  If  you  betray  me,  yes,"  he  answered,  looking  down  into 
her  face  intently.  "  If  you  do  betray  me  however,  remember 
you  will  go  to  prison  too  as  an  accomplice,  and  have  the  plea- 
sant name  of  a  forger's  wife  pinned  to  your  back  for  life." 

"  Sydney,  I  believe  you  are  a  fiend,"  said  Dora  passionately. 
"  You  frighten  me  sometimes,  I  declare  you  do,  with  your  vio- 
lence and  wickedness." 

"  Come  Dody,  this  is  nonsense,"  said  Sydney,  suddenly 
changing  his  rough  manner  to  one  of  caressing  softness.  "  Our 
lives  are  one  now,  and  we  have  to  stand  or  fall  together.  Money 
I  must  have  and  mean  to  have  ;  and  you  can  get  it  for  me, 
and  shall  get  it  for  me,  else  you  will  repent  it,"  he  added,  the 
fierce  old  intonation  ringing  in  his  words  ;  for  his  moods  were 
as  changeable  as  a  sick  child's,  and  he  was  not  to  be  counted 
on  for  stability  in  anything — save  self-indulgence. 

"  I  perfectly  dread  the  sound  of  your  voice,"  Dora  said  pee- 


312  "  WHAT  WOULD  TOD  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

vishly.  "  You  are  getting  associated  ii,  my  mind  with  every- 
thing that  is  painful  and  horrid.  At  one  time  it  was  the  joy 
of  my  life,  my  only  happiness,  to  meet  you  like  this  ;  now  we 
never  see  each  other  but  you  quarrel  with  me,  or  ask  me  to  do 
something  disgraceful  for  you.  First  I  have  to  get  you  ten 
pounds,  and  poor  Alice  is  turned  away  on  suspicion  of  having 
taken  it,  and  I  am  sure  Patricia  is  suspected  too  ;  and  now  I 
have  to  get  you  money  on  a  forged  cheque  1  Where  will  you 
end,  Sydney  ? " 

"  On  the  gallows  perhaps,"  said  Sydney  lightly. 

"  There  is  many  a  true  word  spoken  in  jest ;  and  if  you  go 
on  like  this  you  will  end  on  the  gallows,"  said  Dora  viciously. 

There  was  no  good  to  be  had,  however,  in  quarrelling. 
Sydney  was  determined ;  and  he  had  more  resolution  of  the 
active  kind  than  Dora.  In  a  real  contest  between  them  she 
would  inevitably  give  way ;  and  before  they  parted  she  had 
given  way,  accepting  after  a  short  pause  of  rapid  consideration, 
a  piece  of  paper  whereon  was  written  an  order  to  the  local 
banker  to  pay  to  bearer  the  sum  of  £100 — signed  "Jabez 
Burnley." 

"  Mind  Dora,  gold  ! "  were  Sydney's  last  words.  "  Gold 
eannot  be  traced ;  notes  can." 

The  next  day  was  a  fine,  bright  spring  day,  but  Mrs.  Hamley 
kept  the  house.  She  had  not  been  well  for  these  last  few 
weeks,  and  the  spring  seemed  to  find  out  her  weak  places. 
She  looked  more  pinched  and  worn  than  usual,  and  she  was  in 
a  depressed  state  generally.  But  she  would  not  have  a  doctor, 
and  was  annoyed  if  any  one  seemed  to  think  she  was  failing. 
She  complained  a  good  deal  to  Dora  of  her  disappointment  in 
Patricia,  and  to  Patricia  herself  had  always  a  headache.  Dora 
was,  of  course,  sympathetic  and  soothing,  and  agreed  with  her 
in  her  low  estimate  of  "  poor  Patricia,"  and  said  she  was  cer- 
tainly an  infliction ;  but  nevertheless  she  had  always  her  little 
word  of  kindness  to  add  as  the  sweetener,  and  more  than  once 
brought  Mrs.  Hamley  into  a  favourable  state  of  mind  out  oi 
one  cankered  and  unfavourable. 

As  Mrs.  Hamley  was  not  going  to  drive  to-day,  Dora  pro- 
posed to  take  Patricia  in  the  pony  -carriage  which  Mr.  Hamley 
had  given  to  her  on  her  last  birthday ;  a  pretty  little  blue  Vic- 
toria, with  two  mouse-coloured  ponies  with  blue  and  silver  hare 


PASSING  IT  ON.  313 

• 

ness,  and  a  pyramid  of  bells  topped  with  blue  tufts  hung  about 
the  neck-gear. 

For  their  personal  attendant  they  had  the  page  boy,  at  Dora's 
request.  She  told  Mrs.  Hamley  she  did  not  like  to  take  one  of 
the  men  out  of  the  house  while  she  was  in  it — it  scarcely  looked 
respectful.  "  Dora  has  such  nice  feeling  !  "  said  the  lady,  re- 
lating the  anecdote  to  her  husband.  And,  having  permission 
to  take  Collins,  she  put  a  handful  of  apples  into  her  beadwork 
carriage-basket  for  him.  She  wanted  to  talk  to  Patricia,  and 
she  knew  that  if  the  lad  was  eating  apples  at  the  back  he  could 
not  hear  what  was  being  said  in  low  voices  in  the  front.  She 
could  scarcely  have  bribed  a  man  so  innocently ;  so  perhaps  her 
nice  feelings,  on  which  Mrs.  Hamley  had  expatiated,  would 
have  left  a  rather  different  residuum  had  they  been  analysed. 

To  the  boy  of  course  the  condescension,  kindness,  thought- 
fulness  of  the  gift  were  immeasurable  ;  and  from  that  day  for- 
ward he  was  her  devoted  adherent  who  would  have  gone  to  the 
stake  for  her  had  there  been  the  need.  If  the  true  motive  of 
all  ladies'  smiles  could  be  made  known,  how  many  loyal  knights 
would  be  left  ? 

As  they  got  into  the  little  pony-carriage,  with  the  butler  and 
footmen  at  the  door,  and  Mrs.  Hamley  looking  at  them  from 
the  side-window  of  the  ante-room,  it  was  almost  like  a  royal 
departure  ;  and  when  they  drove  off  down  the  avenue  even  the 
dull  old  butler  thought  they  made  a  pretty  turn  out — for 
young  ladies  not  of  the  real  aristocracy — and  Mrs.  Hamley  was 
quite  proud  of  them.  Both  the  girls  looked  back  and  waved 
their  hands  to  her  as  they  drove  away ;  but  it  was  Dpra  who 
waved  hers  first.  Simply  because  the  other  did  not  know  that 
her  aunt  was  there.  But  the  little  incident  made  the  lady 
sigh,  and  wish  that  her  niece  had  been  as  satisfactory  as  her 
husband's  cousin. 

Then  they  drove  through  the  gates  and  into  the  road,  and 
presently  Dora,  turning  round,  said  graciously  to  the  boy ; 
"  Here,  Collins,  here  are  some  apples  for  you.  I  like  to  please 
children,  and  Collins  is  really  only  a  child  ! "  she  added  apolo- 
getically to  Patricia,  who  needed  no  apology  for  an  action  to 
her  mind  full  of  grace  and  sweetest  womanliness. 

It  was  but  a  little  action  ;  bu£  it  set  the  measure  in  the  girl's 
mind,  and  disposed  her  to  more  than  her  usual  admiration  for 


314  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

her  graceful,  fascinating  friend — the  model  ever  held  before  her 
as  the  supreme  excellence  to  resemble  which  she  ought  to  de- 
vote all  her  energies. 

Presently  Dora,  looking  into  her  face,  said  tenderly  :  "  I 
don't  think  you  are  quite  well  dear,  are  you  ?  " 

"  Yes,  quite  ! "  answered  Patricia ;  "  what  makes  you  think 
I  am  not  ? " 

"  You  are  so  much  more  depressed  than  you  used  to  be. 
You  seem  to  be  so  unhappy  !  " 

"  So  I  am,"  said  Patricia,  tears  coming  up  into  her  eyes.  "  I 
am  more  unhappy  than  at  one  time  I  thought  it  was  possible 
for  me  to  be.  When  I  was  quite  young  1  felt  as  if  I  could  not 
be  unhappy,  as  if  I  must  conquer  circumstances !  " 

"  But  what  is  there  to  make  you  so  unhappy  1 "  asked  Dora. 

"  Knowing  what  I  do,  how  can  I  be  anything  else  1 "  she 
answered. 

"  About  me  ? " 

"  Why,  yes." 

"Why  should  you  let  that  disturb  you  so  much  1 "  said  Dora 
quietly.  "  You  do  not  suffer  by  it  if  I  am  in  a  scrape." 

"  Is  that  your  idea  of  life,  Dora  ?  Do  you  think  one  does 
not  suffer  when  a  person  one  loves  is  in  trouble  ] "  asked  Patri- 
cia quickly.  "  It  is  worse  than  if  it  was  oneself." 

Dora  made  her  favourite  little  grimace. .  "  I  don't  think  so  ! " 
she  said.  "  And  it  is  all  very  well  for  a  person  who  is  not  im- 
plicated to  say  so,  but  we  who  have  to  bear  the  reality  know 
how  light  the  mere  sympathetic  reflection  is !  " 

"  Ah,  Dora,  it  is  not  light !  "  Patricia  cried,  a  world  of  pathos 
in  her  voice. 

"  I  think  it  is,"  persisted  the  other.  "  Look  here  now,  Pa- 
tricia. You  say  you  love  me,  and  feel  for  me,  and  all  that, 
and  make  yourself  miserable  on  my  account ;  but  just  see  what 
you  do — you  make  things  ten  times  worse  for  me  by  fretting 
and  looking  as  if  you  were  always  sulky,  or  so  miserable  no 
one  knows  what  to  do  with  you.  I  have  to  be  brave  and 
cheerful,  I  who  really  suffer  :  and  you  who  have  nothing  to  do 
with  it,  have  given  way,  I  must  say,  both  childishly  and  sel- 
fishly." 

"  I  do  not  want  to  be  either.  Dora ;  but  indeed,  the  know- 
ledge that  you  are  living  in  all  this  deception  has  nearly  brokeij 
my  heart,"  said  Patricia  as  humbly  as  earnestly. 


PASSING   IT  ON.  315 

"  Patricia,  be  reasonable  ;"  remonstrated  Dora.  "What  earthly 
good  do  you  get  by  breaking  your  heart,  as  you  call  it,  except 
spoiling  your  complexion  and  making  everybody  talk  and  sus- 
pect something  1  Grant  that  I  have  been  wrong,  foolish,  stupid 
— anything  you  like,  what  is  done  cannot  be  undone  ;  and  my 
only  wisdom  now  is  to  make  the  best  of  it." 

"  Making  the  best  of  it  would  be  to  tell,"  said  Patricia. 

"  Well,  let  us  see  what  that  would  do  for  me,"  said  Dora, 
quite  calmly.  "  I  should,  first  of  all,  be  turned  out  of  the 
house ;  the  Hamley's  would  not  give  me  sixpence,  perhaps  not  my 
clothes ;  Sydney  would  be  discarded  by  his  father,  who  is  more- 
over ruined ;  he  would  have  no  money,  as  he  knows  nothing 
by  way  of  a  profession  by  which  to  earn  a  loaf  of  bread.  Now, 
•what  could  we  do  ? " 

"  You  would  not  starve,  Dora  ;  you  can  teach.  If  I  were -in 
your  place,  I  would  do  anything  rather  than  live  in  falsehood." 

"  I  cannot  teach  ;  I  have  never  taught ;  I  have  no  connec- 
tion ;  and  pupils  do  not  come  for  the  mere  saying  you  are  ready 
to  have  them." 

"  But  other  people  get  on  by  their  own  exertions  ;  why  not 
you  1 "  said  Patricia. 

"  I  should  hate  teaching,  for  I  hate  children,"  said  Dora. 

"  Dora,  don't ! "  cried  Patricia,  who  loved  them. 

"  Well,  dear,  I  will  tell  stories  and  make  up  a  face  as  girls 
do,  if  you  like  that  better,  and  say  that  I  adore  the  dear  little 
wretches,"  said  Dora  coolly.  "  I  thought  you  liked  truth." 

"  So  I  do ;  but  I  like  the  truth  to  be  good  and  beautiful," 
Patricia  answered. 

"  Ah,,  you  see  I  am  neither  moral  nor  sentimental,  Patricia  ! 
I  know  nothing  of  beautiful  truth  or  ugly  truth.  I  know- 
only  of  an  inconvenient  discovery,  ana  the  wisdom  of  keeping 
one's  own  counsel." 

"  Well,  we  are  different ! "  sighed  Patricia.  "  I  could  not 
act  as  you  are  acting  now  to  save  my  life.  And  I  feel  that  I 
am  sinning  against  my  own  conscience  to  consent  to  it,  even  as 
I  do." 

Dora  smiled  to  herself.  She  thought  the  sin  against  her 
conscience  and  her  consent  to  evil  doing  would  be  greater  be- 
fore this  drive  was  over. 

"  Your  conscience  !  "  she  said,  flicking  her  ponies  with  an 


316  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

off-hand  air.  "  I  have  always  noticed  that  when  people  waat 
to  do  anything  particularly  bad,  like  betrayal  or  selfishness, 
they  talk  of  their  conscience.  I  don't  pretend  to  be  very  truth- 
ful or  very  conscientious,  or  very  anything  that  is  grand ;  but 
I  think  I  would  stand  by  a  friend,  such  as  I  am  and  have  been  from 
the  first  to  you — ask  Mrs.  Hamley  if  I  am  or  not ! — to  the  very 
death.  And  if  I  knew  of  her  being  In  such  a  dreadful  scrape 
as  I  am,  I  would  not  talk  of  my  conscience,  or  doubt  whether 
I  ought  to  betray  her  or  not,  but  I  would  help  her  to  the  very 
utmost  of  my  power." 

"  You  know  I  would  not  betray  you,  Dora,  and  you  know 
that  I  cannot  help  you,"  said  Patricia. 

"  I  am  by  no  means  sure  of  the  first,  and  you  can  do  the 
last,"  Dora  answered.  "  You  can  help  me  very  much — even 
to-day — if  you  chose." 

Patricia  shrunk  back. 

«I?  no!  "she  said. 

"  Oh,  don't  be  alarmed,"  laughed  Dora,  with  a  certain  mock- 
ery in  her  manner.  "  I  am  not  going  to  ask  you  to  hurt  that 
precious  conscience  of  yours  !  I  only  want  a  cheque  changed, 
that  is  all" 

"  I  will  do  that,  of  course,  Dora.  But  why  cannot  you  do 
it  yourself? " 

"  You  inquisitive  little  puss  !  "  she  laughed.  "  Well,  I  will 
tell  you  why.  I  have  some  money  in  the  bank,  and  I  want  to 
draw  it  out  for  poor  Syd.  He  is  so  dreadfully  hard  up,  poor 
boy,  and  I  want  to  help  him.  You  know  he  is  my  husband, 
Patricia,  and  it  is  my  duty,"  with  a  sorrowfully  subdued  and 
loyal  air. 

"  And  you  do  not  want  the  Hamleys  to  know  that  you  have 
taken  it  out  ? " 

"  Of  course  not — not  for  worlds.  I  should  be  ruined  indeed 
if  they  knew.  Syd  will  put  it  back  again  some  day,  and  it  will 
never  be  found  out  if  you  take  the  cheque.  Of  course  it 
would  if  I  did." 

The  mysteries  of  banking  were  by  no  means  clear  to  Pa- 
tricia ;  and  she  accepted  Dora's  reasoning. 

"I  am  sorry  you  have  to  give  the  rnuney,"  she  said. 

"  But  it  is  my  duty,  is  it  not  ? "  said  Dora  sweetly. 

Patricia  hesitated  for  a  moment. 

"Yes,"  she  then  said  ;  "it  i$." 


PASSING  IT  ON.  317 

Dora  gave  a  great  sigh  of  relief;  then  she  smiled  pleasantly. 

"  I  must  say  this,  Patricia,  you  are  a  most  good-natured  girl," 
she  said  looking  into  her  face  prettily.  "  I  am  going  to  turn 
down  the  London  road  now,  and  we  will  pass  through  Mill- 
town  on  our  way  home.  I  will  stop  at  Martin's  ;  I  want  some 
muslin ;  and  you  can  walk  into  the  bank  and  get  the  cheque 
changed.  It's  for  a  hundred  pounds,  and  you  must  bring  it  all 
in  gold." 

"  Very  well,"  said  Patricia. 

"  And  you  will  be  sure,  dear,  not  to  tell  1  n 

"  The  Hamleys  ?     Of  course  not." 

"  Not  if  they  ask  you  ?  Suppose  they  get  any  suspicion  of 
it,  you  will  never  betray  me  ?  " 

"  Certainly  not,"  was  Patricia's  answer. 

"  You  swear  ] "  with  strange  earnestness. 

"  Yes.  I  swear." 

"  Join  hands  on  it !  "  said  Dora. 

And  Patricia  took  the  little  well-gloved  hand  in  hers  and 
pressed  it. 

"  Y6u  may  trust  me,  dear,"  she  said.  "  When  I  promise,  I 
hope  I  always  perform." 

After  this  the  conversation  turned,  and  Dora  seemed  as  if 
she  could  not  show  enough  tenderness  and  sweetness  to  her 
friend.  She  was  everything  that  was  most  charming — playful, 
grave,  affectionate,  earnest ;  full  of  the  freshest  sympathy  for 
.  Patricia's  troubles  with  her  aunt,  and  eager  to  point  out  where  and 
how  she  could  mend  her  position ;  she  spoke  respectfully  of  the 
Fletchers,  with  whom  there  had  been  a  break  on  account  of 
Alice  Garth,  much  to  Patricia's  pain  ;  with  a  matronly  apprecia- 
tion of  Lord  Merrian ;  tenderly  of  the  poor ;  with  wonder  and 
regret  at  the  whole  mystery  of  Alice  Garth.  There  was  not 
the  slightest  fibre  in  the  swansdown  nature  of  her  that  curled 
the  wrong  way,  and  the  remainder  of  the  drive  was  simply 
what  she  intended  it  to  be,  enchantment.  She  was  a  Circe  in 
her  way ;  and  blinded  if  she  did  not  brutalize  her  lovers. 

But  to  do  her  justice,  all  the  time  she  felt  the  deepest  hatred 
for  Sydney,  who  was  forcing  her  to  this  sorry  part,  and  a  kind 
of  reverential  pity  for  the  credulous  affection  of  the  girl  on 
whose  loyalty  she  was  trading ;  while  disagreeable  gushes  of 
self-accusation  forced  themselves  in  between  her  shallower 


318  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

thoughts  like  bitter  waters  welling  up  through  surface  pools. 
But  self- accusation  was  not  much  in  her  line,  and  as  a  rule  she 
was  more  inclined  to  throw  the  blame  of  her  own  wrong-doing 
on  others  than  accept  it  for  herself. 

At  last  they  reached  Milltown,  and  Dora  drew  up  at 
Martin's.  Collins  jumped  out  to  the  pomes'  heads. 

"Will  you  go  now,  dear?"  Dora  said  to  Patricia,  put- 
ting a  folded  piece  of  paper  into  her  hand. 

"  Yes ;  what  am  1  to  do  1 " 

"Just  hand  that  across  the  counter  as  it  is.  You  need  not 
open  it.  The  man  will  say,  '  How  will  you  have  it  ? '  and  you 
will  answer, '  Gold.'  Don't  be  persuaded  into  notes.  It  must 
be  gold." 

"  Very  well,"  said  Patricia  and  went  off  on  her  errand. 

In  due  time  she  returned.  She  had  a  small  canvas  bag  in 
her  hand,  containing  a  hundred  sovereigns,  bright  and  fresh. 
Never  was  a  felony  committed  with  so  much  ease,  so  little 
doubt,  so  little  delay.  Sydney  had  reason  to  be  proud  of  his 
wife's  ability,  and  Dora  of  her  own  power.  Poor  Patricia  was 
the  sacrifice  on  to  whom  they  bound  the  burden  of  the  sin  ;  a 
burden  she  bore  so  innocently,  with  such  simple  unconsciousness 
of  its  true  meaning,  such  a  faithful  desire  only  to  do  what  was 
right  and  kind  and  loving.  But  so  it  ever  is  in  this  strange 
life  of  ours.  We  are  punished  more  for  our  virtues  than  our 
vices  ;  and  those  of  us  who  succeed  best  in  'their  generation  are 
for  the  most  part  those  who  sin  beyond  the  average,  but  with 
more  than  the  average  craft  and  cleverness. 

The  next  month  passed  like  wedding-bells.  Everybody  was 
in  good  humour,  consequently  every  one  was  delightful.  Syd- 
ney, freed  from  his  immediate  embarrassments  and  set  afloat 
for  a  time,  was  again  dear  Dora's  devoted  lover,  and  their  rela- 
tions were  of  the  most  harmonious  kind  ;  for  she  too,  disillu- 
sioned as  to  the  possibility  of  the  great  prize  had  things  been 
different,  thought  Sydney  Lowe  better  than  no  one,  and  made 
herself  happy  in  her  consciousness  of  power  and  a  secret. 

Lord  Merrian  came  frequently  to  Abbey  Holme  ;  but  he  let 
it  be  seen  he  came  for  Patricia,  and  no  one  could  doubt  that  he 
was  "  paying  her  attention. );  Apparently  Lord  and  Lady 
Dovedale  were  not  averse  to  their  son's  choice,  for  the  two 
girls  were  as  often  at  the  Quest  as  Lord  Merrian  was  at  Abbey 


PASSING  IT  ON.  319 

Holme ;  and  the  countess  took  especial  notice  of  Miss  Kemball, 
and  sought  to  train  and  draw  her  out  in  every  possible  direc- 
tion. She  was  not  the  girl  she  would  have  chosen ;  but  she 
knew  her  son,  and — knowing  him — adopted  the  silken  and  not 
the  driving  rein,  taking  care  never  to  oppose  him  when  she 
wished  to  guide  If  Patricia  Kemball  was  richly  dowered  she 
would  put  up  with  her  unformed  habits  for  a  while,  trusting 
to  her  own  future  power  of  perfect  modelling.  So  she  culti- 
vated Lord  Merrian's  Joan  of  Arc  assiduously,  and  by  the  look 
of  things  she  was  pleased  at  the  result  of  her  studies.  On  her 
side,  though  Patricia  never  liked  the  countess  as  she  liked  Miss 
Fletcher,  and  never  got  to  feel  really  at  home  with  her,  she 
was  too  affectionate  and  responsive  not  to  open  her  heart  when 
so  graciously  entreated  ;  and  as  she  suspected  nothing  beyond 
what  she  saw,  and  showed  that  she  did  not,  she  was  at  least 
unconscious,  if  not  always  unembarrassed. 

The  Hamleys  watched  this  growing  affair  with  intense  satis- 
faction. As  Lady  Merrian,  Patricia's  greatest  faults  would 
become  shining  virtues,  and  every  defect  would  be  a  splendid 
jewel.  Her  aunt  would  feel  then  that  she  had  been  bountifully 
repaid  for  all  her  care,  her  endeavours,  her  annoyances,  her 
headaches ;  and  Mr.  Hamley  would  bow  down  to  her  as  one  of 
the  divinities  by  whom  he  had  been  borne  upward.  He 
was  prepared  to  give  her  a  really  magnificent  portion  ;  one 
quite  up  to  the  mark  set  by  the  earl  and  countess  ;  and  he 
would  never  grudge  the  outlay,  he  said.  It  would  be  money 
well  laid  out,  he  felt,  and  he  did  not  care  how  soon  he  had 
to  write  the  cheque. 

So  the  sunny  days  of  May  came  in  with  hope  and  serenity 
all  round ;  save  perhaps  to  Patricia  herself.  She  did  not  feel 
so  joyous  as  the  rest,  and  she  missed  the  Fletchers.  For  them, 
they  looked  on  a  little  sadly ;  but  they  did  not  discuss  the  pre- 
sent state  of  affairs  even  between  themselves.  All  that  Henry 
Fletcher  said  when  he  had  seen  the  young  people  together  was  : 
"  I  question  if  our  Patricia  will  be  perfectly  happy  in  that 
sphere ;  and  I  doubt  if  Lord  Merrian  is  strong  or  true  enough 
*br  her  1" 


320  "WHAT  WOULt)  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTEH  XXIX. 

THE  ORDEAL. 

E.  HAMLEY'S  making-up  day  with  the  bank  came 
round,  and  his  books  and  cheques  were  sent  up  to 
Abbey  Holme  as  usual.  He  sat  in  his  private  study; 
not  the  larger  library  where  Patricia  used  to  go  for  big  books 
and  brain-bewilderment,  and  where  he  was  wont  to  receive  his 
more  special  visitors  when  he  wished  to  impress  them  as  a  man 
of  culture  as  well  as  of  substance  ;  but  in  the  smaller  "  Growl- 
ery,"  as  he  used  to  call  it,  which  the  upholsterer  and  the 
gilder  had  made  as  fine  and  shining  as  a  newly-minted  sovereign. 
He  himself,  clad  in  his  gorgeous  Oriental  morning  gown,  clean, 
perfumed,  his  hair  well  oiled,  his  whiskers  curled  and  lustrous, 
every  point  of  him  prosperous  and  every  line  of  him  magnifi- 
cent, was  a  fit  inmate  of  that  gorgeous,  glittering,  florid  little 
room.  As  he  sat  in  his  big  arm-chair  and  balanced  his  counter- 
foils and  his  cheques,  his  payings-in  and  his  drawings-out  with 
method  and  satisfaction,  he  looked  the  type,  of  vulgar  affluence, 
of  sensual,  social  contentment.  There  did  not  seem  to  be  a 
crook  in  his  lot  anywhere  ;  not  one  invading  fly  to  disturb  the 
sweetness  of  his  fat  and  fragrant  ointment. 

Cheque  by  cheque,  and  voucher  by  voucher,  scrip  and  warrant, 
dividend  and  rent,  all  was  exact  and  all  satisfactory ;  when 
suddenly  he  gave  a  surprised  snort  and  jumped  with  an  un- 
dignified kind  of  bound  in  his  chair.  A  cheque  which  was 
none  of  his,  but  which  was  signed  with  such  a  perfect  imitation 
of  his  handwriting  that  he  could  scarcely  disbelieve  its  evidence, 
came  out  from  among  the  rest,  and  for  a  moment  staggered 
him.  "  Pay  self  or  bearer  one  hundred  pounds  ;"  signed  Jabea 
Hamley,  and  dated  about  three  weeks  ago.  He  might  look  at 
it  till  his  eyes  ached,  he  could  make  no  more  nor  less  of  it  than 
a  cheque  with  his  name  to  it,  and  a  hundred  pounds  written  off 
his  balance.  It  was  a  forgery,  but  so  neatly  done  that  he  had 
to  be  quite  sure  of  his  unvarying  exactness  not  to  be  forced  to 
accept  it  as  his  own.  , 


THE  ORDEAL.  321 

After  examining  it  all  round,  balancing  his  figures  again  and 
again,  hunting  through  and  through  his  books  and  papers  with 
no  better  result  than  at  first,  he  wrote  a  hurried  note  to  Mr. 
Wells,  the  bank  manager,  and  sent  off  a  man  on  horseback  to 
Milltown  at  hot  speed ;  which  note  had  the  effect  of  bringing 
up  that  gentleman,  also  at  hot  speed,  with  a  scared  and  troubled 
face. 

"  Here's  a  mystery  somewheres,  Wells,"  said  Mr.  Hamley, 
flicking  the  cheque  with  his  forefinger.  "  Here's  a  bit  of  paper 
that  I  never  put  pen  to — that  I'll  swear ! " 

"  Surely,  sir,  surely ! "  said  Mr.  Wells  in-  a  deprecating  tone. 

He  thought  the  prosperous  brewer  a  little  out  in  his  objection. 

*  I  suppose  1  may  be  allowed  to  recognise  my  own  hand- 
writing !  "  said  Mr.  Hamley  haughtily. 

"  Certainly,  sir;  but  when  a  member  of  your  family  presents 
a  cheque  signed — or  apparently  signed,  let  us  say,  for  argument's 
sake — by  yourself,  aud  asks  for  it  specially  in  gold,  one  is  not 
likely  to  suspect  any  mistake ;  especially  with  such  a  signa- 
ture," Mr.  Wells  replied  ;  "  I  happened  to  be  in  the  bank  at 
the  time,  and  I  remember  the  circumstance  perfectly  well." 

He  took  up  several  of  the  cheques,  one  after  the  other,  and 
compared  them  with  the  one  which  Mr.  Hamley  disowned.  Not 
the  cleverest  expert  could  have  told  the  difference  between  this 
and  those  acknowledged.  The  method  of  filling  in  was  precisely 
the  same,  and  the  "  Jabez  Hamley "  was  fac-simile.  Like 
many  men  of  his  kind,  Mr.  Hamley  had  never  been  able  to 
conquer  satisfactorily  the  mysteries  of  caligraphy.  He  spoke 
pompously,  but  he  wrote  meanly ;  an  uneducated,  rude  sort  of 
hand,  both  pinched  and  illegible.  His  signature,  however,  was 
his  strong  point.  With  infinite  pains  he  had  elaborated  a 
special  cipher  which  he  considered  inimitable.  The  way  in 
which  the  H  joined  on  to  the  z  was  to  his  mind  a  marvel  of 
ingenuity ;  but  because  it  was  so  ingenious  it  was  also  the 
easiest  thing  in  the  world  to  copy.  One  "Jabez  Hamley" 
was  just  like  another  "Jabez  Hamley;"  and  the  flourish  at 
the  end,  with  the  loops  intersected  at  precisely  the  same  point, 
and  the  three  spots  in  the  middle,  was  always  done  as  exactly 
as  if  it  had  been  lithographed.  It  was  a~ signature  no  more 
difficult  to  imitate  than  so  much  print,  and  so  far  was  charao 


322  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DC),  LOVE?" 

teristic  of  the  ordinary  knave,  inasmuch  as  it  imagined  itself 
inscrutable  and  was  patent. 

"  Which  member  of  my  family  ? "  asked  Mr.  Hamley  in  a 
tone  of  surprise.  "  Oblige  me  with  the  name." 

"  One  of  your  young  ladies,"  said  Mr.  Wells.  "  And  I  do 
not  know  her  name." 

Mr.  Hamley's  florid  face  grew  several  shades  paler.  For  a 
moment  lie  did  not  answer.  Was  he  on  the  track  of  a  mystery  ? 
beginning  with  that  roll  of  ten  sovereigns,  had  it  gone  on  to 
this  daring  deed  of  iniquity  ? 

As  Dora  was  out  of  the  question,  was  it  possible  that 
Patricia  Kemball,  with  all  her  directness  and  apparent  honesty, 
was  in  reality  only  a  thief  ?  a  forger  ?  and  if  so,  why  t  and 
under  whose  instruction  ?  "  She  was  far  too  big  a  fool,"  he 
said  to  himself,  "  to  do  this  thing  alone.  Who,  then,  was  her 
confederate  ?  Who  egged  her  on  ?  Who  backed  her  up  V 

Mr.  Hamley  was  not  a  cruel  man,  save  to  his  early  patrons 
or  fore-time  tyrants,  and  he  was  truly  sorry  for  Patricia,  sup- 
posing it  to  be  she ;  for  his  wife,  too  ;  but  he  was  a  magistrate 
as  well  as  a  host  and  a  husband,  and  he  had  his  duty  to  society 
to  perform  like  a  man  and  a  citizen.  And  he  had  also  his  duty 
to  perform  to  Dora.  He  thought  of  all  this  rapidly.  He  must 
have  it  made  quite  clear  to  Mr.  Wells  that  the  member  of  his 
family,  the  young  lady  of  whom  he  spoke,  was  not  his  cousin, 
Dora  Drummond.  It  was  bad  enough  as  it  was,  whoever  it 
might  be.  Had  it  been  indeed  the  other]  Even  to  Mr. 
Hamley,  prosperous,  affluent,  well  oiled,  and  trimly  brushed, 
life  would  have  lost  its  savour  had  Dora  Drummond  proved  a 
failure.  No,  he  must  have  no  suspicion  rest  on  her  pure  head. 
It  was  a  sad  alternative,  truly ;  and  he  pitied  that  misguided 
young  person,  Patricia,  profoundly,  supposing  she  was  to  be 
convicted ;  but  justice  compelled  him. 

He  rang  the  bell. 

"  My  compliments  to  the  two  young  ladies,  and  beg  them  to 
step  this  way,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  to  the  servant. 

In  a  few  moments  the  girls  appeared,  both  looking  as  was 
their  wont,  save  that  Dora  was  just  a  little  paler  than  usual. 
Graceful,  self-possessed,  and  yet  not  in  the  least  assertive,  she 
came  in  with  her  pretty  bending  action  and  sweet  amiability 
of  face,  followed  by  Patricia,  tall  and  upright,  with  her  large 


TflE  ORDEAt*.  323 

inquiring  eyes  and  child-like  unconsciousness,  looking  half- 
amused  and  half-amazed  as  to  what  Mr  Hamley  could  possibly 
want  with  them. 

"  Be  seated,  young  ladies,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  waving  his 
hand  magisterially. 

The  girls,  greatly  wondering,  sat  down — at  least,  Patricia  , 
wondered  and  Dora  feigned  that  she  did.  In  reality  she  knew 
the  whole  thing  by  heart,  and  was  aware  that  Patricia's  ordeal, 
and  in  consequence  her  own  fate,  were  both  at  hand.  One 
glance  at  the  bank  manager,  at  the  open  cheque-book,  and  the 
cancelled  cheques — at  tJiat  cheque  lying  uppermost,  more  than 
all — told  her  the  name  of  the  mystery,  and  why  they  had  been 
summoned.  But  she  took  her  chair  peacefully,  and  sat  with 
meek  attention  on  her  face,  waiting.* 

"Which  young  lady  ?"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  not  without  a  secret 
hope  that  there  had  been  a  mistake,  and  that  the  person  who 
presented  the  cheque  might  be  found  to  have  been  only  a 
servant  in  her  holiday  clothes  ;  and,  of  course,  the  ruin  of  only 
a  servant  was  but  a  trivial  affair. 

"  That  one,"  answered  Mr.  Wells,  pointing  to  Patricia. 

Patricia  looked  frankly  into  his  face ;  Dora  by  a  side  glance 
seeing  what  she  did,  turned  her  pretty  head  also,  and  looked  up 
like  Patricia  at  the  manager. 

"  You  are  sure  1 "  demanded  Mr.  Hamley ;  and,  in  spite  of 
himself,  his  voice  trembled. 

He  did  not  like  Patricia  over-well ;  but  to  find  her  guilty  OA 
forgery  was  rather  different  from  finding  her  too  full  of  energy, 
more  direct  than  he  considered  lady-like,  and  not  half  as  pliant 
as  she  should  be. 

"  Ask  the  young  lady  herself,"  said  Mr.  Wells. 

"  Did  you  perform  this  action,  Miss  Kemball  ? "  asked  Mr. 
Hamley. 

He  called  her  by  her  surname  purposely,  that  Dora's  might 
be  held  clear. 

"  Perform  what  ? "  asked  Patricia. 

At  that  moment  the  door  opened  and  Mrs.  Hamley  came  in. 
She  had  no  idea  of  a  conclave  in  which  she  had  not  her  place  ; 
and  where  the  girls  were  she  felt  she  had  a  right  to  be  also. 

"  Come,  this  is  too  strong  !  Did  you  present  this  cheque  to 
the  bank  on  the  third  1 "  said  Mr.  Hamley. 


324  "WHAT  wori.n  von  DO,  LOVE?" 

"I  took  a  cheque  to  the  bank,  certainly  ;  but  I  forget  if  it 
was  on  the  third?"  Said  Patricia;  "and  I  do  net  know  if  it 
was  that  one  or  not." 

"  Then  you  did  not  do  this  yourself? "  Mr.  Hamley  demanded. 

"Do  what  ? — I  do  not  understand,"  she  answered. 

"  I  will  be  explicit.  Did  you  or  did  you  not  sign  a  cheque 
with  my  name — a  cheque  for  one  hundred  pounds,  made  pay- 
able to  self  or  bearer,  signed  Jabez  Hamley  in  imitation  of  my 
usual  signature  ? — that  is,  did  you,  or  did  you  not  commit  this 
forgery  ? " 

Patricia  started  to  her  feet. 

"  Commit  a  forgery  1 — No.  Are  you  mad,  Mr.  Hamley !" 
she  cried. 

"  Are  you  ? "  he  answered  significantly. 

She  turned  towards  her  aunt,  and  holding  out  one  hand 
cried,  "  Aunt ! "  Her  voice  and  attitude  meant,  "  Protect  me 
from  this  man's  insults  !  " 

Mrs.  Hamley  came  forward  and  laid  her  hand  on  the  girl's 
shoulder. 

"  The  child  is  incapable  of  such  an  action,"  she  said. 

Patricia  threw  up  her  head  with  its  old  free  gesture  and 
kissed  the  long,  lean  hand  fervently. 

"  Thank  you  aunty,"  she  said,  and  looked  at  Dora. 

Dora  was  looking  down,  and  keeping  silence. 

"So  I  think,  Lady,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  with  riot  ungenerous 
promptness  ;  "  your  niece  does  not  possess  enough  knowledge 
of  business  to  enable  her  to  have  played  this  trick ;  but  she 
may  be  the  tool  of  some  one  else,  and  I  believe  she  is.  I  want 
to  get  to  the  bottom  of  this,  and  to  know  whose  hands  she  is 
in.  The  person  who  gave  her  that  cheque  must  have  known 
it  was  a  forgery." 

Slowly  the  truth  began  to  dawn  upon  Patricia. 

"You  say  that  cheque  is  a  forgery?"  she  asked,  turning  her 
eyes  down  to  the  table  and  speaking  to  Mr.  Hamley  without 
looking  at  him. 

"  It  is  so ;  a  forgery,"  he  answered. 

"  And  any  one  but  myself  would  have  understood  this  ? " 

"  Any  one,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  emphatically.  "  I  should  say 
that  no  one  well  out  of  the  egg-shell  but  Miss  Kemball  would 
not  have  discovered  that  fact." 


THE  ORDEAL.  820 

Again  she  looked  at  Dora.  Her  face  had  a  kind  of  agony  in 
it,  but  it  was  firm  too.  Dora  was  gazing  tenderly  at  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley,  her  soft  voice  murmuring  sympathetically,  "  Poor  dear, 
how  I  pity  you  ! " 

"  But  you  presented  this  cheque  1 "  continued  Mr.  Hamley, 
after  a  short  pause.  "  So  much  you  acknowledge  t " 

Patricia's  eyes  went  back  from  Dora  to  the  table. 

"  Yes  I  gave  that  cheque,  or  one  like  it ;  what  I  gave  I  never 
saw,"  she  said. 

"  You  got  the  money  for  it,  however  ? " 

"  Yes  ;  I  got  a  hundred  pounds  in  gold  for  it."  She  spoke 
slowly  and  distinctly. 

Mrs.  Hamley  withdrew  her  hand. 

"  You  say  you  did  not  see  the  cheque  t "  continued  Mr. 
Hamley  in  the  manner  of  a  cross-examination. 

"  No  ;  it  was  folded  up  when  I  had  it,  and  I  gave  it  to  the 
man  folded." 

"  And  you  received  your  hundred  pounds  in  gold  !* 

"  Yes." 

"  What  has  become  of  that  sum  of  money  1 — a  considerable 
sum  of  money  for  a  young  lady  to  lift  1  " 

"  I  cannot  say." 

"  Did  you  make  use  of  it  ? " 

"  No ! "  she  said  indignantly.  "  Do  you  think  it  was  for  my- 
self?" 

"  Then  who  had  it?  who  benefited  by  it?" 

"  I  will  not  tell  you,  Mr.  Hamley,"  she  answered. 

Dora  wiped  her  short  upper  lip  daintily  with  her  embroidered 
handkerchief,  and  drew  a  little  sobbing  kind  of  breath. 

"  Did  you  hand  over  the  money  to  the  person  who  gave  you 
the  cheque  ?" 

"  Yes,"  she  said. 

"  And  you  had  no  idea  of  its  being  a  forgery  ?"  asked  Mr. 
Wells. 

"  A  forgery  ! — I  ?  No,  indeed  ;  quite  the  contrary,"  said 
Patricia,  with  energy.  "  It  was  given  me  by  a  person  who 
said  the  money  was  their  own  ;"  with  intentional  bad  grammar  : 
her  own  would  have  betrayed  Dora,  his  would  have  been  a 
falsehood. 


326  "WHAT  WOITLD  YOU  DO.   LOVE?" 

"  But  how  came  you  to  be  asked  to  do  such  a  thing  ?  Good 
heavens  !  who  could  have  asked  you  1  "  cried  Mrs.  Hamley. 

"  That  1  shall  not  tell,"  answered  the  girl.  "  I  promised  to 
keep  the  secret,  and  I  shall  not  break  my  word." 

"  I  think."  said  Mr.  Hamley  with  unpleasant  but  yet  kindly 
pomposity,  "if  I  could  convince  you,  my  dear  young  lady,  of 
the  injury  this  piece  of  paper  has  done  me,  you  would  consider' 
it  your  duty  to  deliver  up  to  me  the  name  of  the  delinquent." 

"  I  am  very  sorry,  Mr.  Hamley,"  Patricia  said,  not  in  any 
manner  defiantly,  humbly  indeed  and  sorrowfully,  yet  quite 
steadily  ;  "  but  I  promised  that  I  would  not." 

"  And,  if  failing  your  confession  which  I  have  the  right  to 
demand,  I  assume  that  you  are  cleverer  than  your  words — that 
you  have  concocted  this  story  to  account  for  the  forgery — and 
that  you  yourself  have  forged  my  name,  trusting  to  my  respect 
for  my  wife,  your  aunt,  not  to  prosecute  you — what  then  1 " 
asked  the  master  of  Abbey  Holme  loftily. 

"  I  shall  have  to  bear  the  burden,"  said  Patricia  in  a  low 
voice.  "  I  did  not  know  that  I  was  doing  wrong  or  being 
mixed  up  in  anything  disgraceful.  Still,  as  I  promised,  I  must 
keep  my  word  whatever  happens  to  me." 

"  It  all  seems  to  me  like  a  dream  ! "  said  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  A 
forged  cheque  presented  by  Patricia,  and  she  owning  to  it,  with 
some  wild  story  of  its  having  been  given  .  to  her  by  some  one, 
and  she  promising  not  to  tell.  It  is  like  a  nightmare  !  " 
The  poor  lady  put  her  hand  to  her  forehead.  "  Can  you  under- 
stand it,  Dora  ? " 

u  No,  dear,"  said  Dora  softly.' 

"  You  cannot  guess  at  anything  to  help  us  ?  " 

There  was  a  tone  of  anguish  in  the  thin  voice  that  was  infi- 
nitely tragical. 

"  No,  dear,"  again  answered  Dora. 

"  Let  us  refer  back  and  see  what  you  were  engaged  in  that 
day,"  said  Sir.  Hamley,  turning  over  the  pages  of  a  diary. 
"  Where  were  you  Miss  Kemball,  may  I  ask,  on  the  third  of 
last  month  1 " 

"  Driving  with  Dora,"  answered  Patricia. 

All  eyes  turned  on  Dora,  who  met  the  glances  innocently  ; 
then  turned  her  face  towards  Patricia,  as  if  listening  like  the 
rest  to  a  story  she  did  not  understand. 


THE  ORDEAL.  327 

"  Driving  with  Dora,"  repeated  Mr.  Hamley.  "  Good,  to 
commence  with.  Driving  with  Dora  !  where  1 " 

"  To  Green  Lanes  first,  and  then  to  Milltown,"  answered 
Patricia. 

"  And  at  Milltown  what  may  have  occurred,  pray  ? " 

"  I  left  Dora  at  Martin's,  and  went  on  to  the  Bank  for  the 
money,"  said  Patricia  quite  steadily. 

"  Dora  !  do  help  in  this  horrible  mystery  !  "  said  Mrs.  Ham- 
My  angrily. 

Dora  raised  her  eyes  and  looked  at  Patricia. 

"  I  cannot,"  she  said,  "  All  I  know  is  that  Patricia  left  me 
at  Martin's,  and  went  up  the  street  by  herself.  When  I  asked 
her  where  she  had  been,  she  sai'd  to  the  Bank  to  change  a 
cheque.  Of  course  I  made  no  further  inquiries.  I  could  have 
no  kind  of  idea  that  any  thing  was  wrong  in  the  affair,  and  to 
say  the  truth  I  never  gave  it  another  thought  till  this  moment." 

During  this  speech  Patricia  stood  like  a  statue. 

She  neither  moved  nor  spoke,  neither  looked  nor  sighed. 
She  might  have  been  struck  to  stone  for  the  absolute  rigidity 
of  her  face  and  bearing.  The  whole  thing  suddenly  became 
clear  to  her,  and  she  understood  for  the  first  time  the  real  na- 
ture of  the  girl  she  had  loved  and  pitied  and  put  before  her  as 
a  model  to  be  imitated — if  at  such  a  humble  distance,  yet 
always  loyally. 

"  But  you  said  you  did  not  know  anything  about  it,"  said 
Mrs.  Hamley  irritably  to  Dora. 

"  Nor  do  I,  dear.  I  know  no  more  than  I  have  said,"  she 
answered  deprecatingly. 

"  You  should  have  told  us  that  Patricia  went  to  the  Bank," 
said  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  A  girl  of  her  age  and  ignorance  should 
not  be  suffered  to  do  such  things  unknown." 

"  Perhaps  I  ought — I  know  I  ought."  said  Dora  coming 
close  to  Mrs.  Hamley  and  speaking  with  caressing  humility; 
"  but  I  thought  nothing  of  the  fact  at  the  time,  and  never 
once  remembered  it  since.  Believe  me,  dear,  the  whole  thing 
is  as  dark  to  me  as  to  you.  I  knew  and  suspected  nothing  !  " 

As  Dora  came  nearer  to  Mrs.  Hamley,  Patricia  drew  away. 
She  felt  it  as  an  infinite  dishonour  to  seem  to  canvass  for  her 
aunt's  good  favour  while  Dora,  that  false  friend,  was  by  her  side. 
She  was  not  willing  to  put  herself  in  any  kind  of  competition 


328  '-WHAT  WOITLD  vor  no,  LOVE?" 

t 

with  her ;  rather,  with  the  passionate  self-immolation  of  the 
young,  she  felt,  let  them  suspect  her  of  a  crime  and  praise 
Dora  for  her  truth  and  goodness ;  the  consciousness  of  her  in- 
nocence was  enough  for  her,  let  what  would  else  afflict  her  ! 

"  Well !  I  do  not  see  that  I  can  do  more  in  this  affair,"  then 
said  Mr.  Hamley  turning  to  Mr.  Wells.  "  You  will  please  to 
forget  this  household  scene,  this  little  domestic  drama  as  I  call 
it ;  and  observe,  Wells  ! — I  accept  the  cheque.  There  is  a 
mystery  about  it  ;  but  hang  me  if  I  can  find  it  out !  and  I  am 
not  a  going  to  prosecute  Mrs.  Hamley's  niece  to  get  hold  of  it. 
Keep  a  close  tongue  in  your  head  of  what  you  have  seen  if  you 
please,  and  now,  good  morning." 

So  Mr.  Wells  bowed  himself  out,  and  went  from  the  presence 
of  the  great  man  burdened  with  a  secret  of  bigger  dimensions 
than  he  had  ever  had  before. 

And  when  he  had  gone  Patricia's  worst  time  began. 

Mrs.  Hamley,  whose  family  pride  and  natural  sense  of  wo- 
manly justice  were  no  longer  called  into  action  by  the  presence 
of  a  stranger,  took  her  in  hand,  and  dealt  with  her  as  severely 
as  she  had  hitherto  been  lenient.  She  seemed  to  forget  that  she 
had  just  now  claimed  for  her  innocence  against  her  husband, 
and  turning  round  on  her,  told  her  that  she  had  disgraced  her- 
self, her  father's  name,  and  her  uncle's  memory  ;  in  any  circum- 
stance, and  put  it  as  mildly  as  she  would,  she  was  still  a 
disgrace  to  the  family  and  a  shame  to  herself.  It  was  her 
duty  to  tell.  If  she  had  riot  really  done  this  thing  herself,  and 
had  beent  as  she  pretended,  the  dupe  of  some  one  else  older 
and  more  designing,  it  was  still  her  duty  to  tell.  In  keeping 
it  secret  she  was  making  herself  a  party  to  the  fraud,  and  was 
in  point  of  fact  as  bad  as  the  person,  whoever  it  might  be,  who 
initiated  the  crime. 

Mr.  Hamley  followed  on  his  wife's  track  by  talking  largely 
of  his  "  ward's" — if  she  would  allow  him  to  give  her  this  appel- 
lation— at  all  events  his  "  guest's"  duty  to  the  state  as  a  citizen  ; 
of  the  obedience  due  by  all  citizens  to  the  law  whereof  he  was 
an  unworthy  dispenser  ;  and  of  the  consideration  due  to 
himself  personally,  as  her  host  and  the  husband  of  her  aunt. 

To  all  of  which  Patricia  listened  respectfully  enough  ;  her 
dilated  eyes  filling  now  and  then  with  tears  which  never  over- 
flowed the  lids,  wondering  when  her  lecture  was  to  be  over  ; 


THE  ORDEAL.  329 

wondering  at  Dora's  infamy  and  shame  in  suffering  her  to  bear 
all  this  without  coming  forward  to  defend  and  exonerate  her  ; 
but,  while  her  intelligence  was  broad  enough  to  take  it  all  in 
from  their  point  of  view,  and  to  see  herself  as  they  must  see 
her,  clinging  to  her  own  higher  sense  of  truth  and  loyalty,  and 
preferring  to  bear  all  rather  than  betray  her  trust.  Since  Dora 
had  spoken  as  she  had  done,  disclaiming  while  seeming  to  ex- 
plain so  far  as  she  could  the  mystery  she  herself  had  created, 
Patricia  had  not  once  looked  at  her,  nor  had  Dora  looked  at  her ; 
so  far  the  latter  knew  the  grace  of  shame  ;  atid  she  gave  but 
one  unvarying  answer  to  all  their  threats,  their  entreaties 
to  tell — "  I  cannot,"  or  "  I  must  not." 

Then  said  Aunt  Hamley  in  a  rage, 

"  I  tell  you  what  it  is,  Patricia — you  did  it  yourself.  It  is 
absurd  to  think  that  a  girl  of  your  age  could  have  been  made 
such  a  mere  catspaw  as  you  pretend.  You  knew  what  you  were 
about,  well  enough.  You  forged  your  uncle's  name,  or  you  knew 
that  your  accomplice  had  done  so.  You  stole  that  ten  pounds 
of  mine  in  the  beginning  ;  and  now  you  have  gone  on  in  your 
wickedness  till  you  have  done  this  awful  thing." 

"  Aunt,  don't !  don't  ! "  cried  Patricia  covering  her  face. 
Then  holding  out  her  hands  beseechingly,  "  Say  you  don't  believe 
this,  aunt !  Say  it,  aunt — dear  aunt  ! — for  my  uncle's  sake,  for 
my  father's  sake  !  " 

"  Confess,  Patricia  !  If  you  are  in  earnest,  confess  ! "  said 
Aunt  Hamley's  harsh  metallic  voice. 

"  I  cannot!  T  must  not,  aunt !  Oh,  believe  in  me  !  indeed  I 
am  innocent  I  Dora !  tell  them  I  am  innocent !  " 

"  How  can  I  tell  them  that  ?  "  said  Dora  with  sincere  regret 
— yes,  her  regret  was  sincere  enough  ;  but  she  spoke  with  mean- 
ing all  the  same,  to  recall  Patricia  to  herself  and  the  remembrance 
of  her  promise.  "  I  believe  that  you  are  innocent ;  in  my  own 
mind  I  feel  sure  ;  but  how  can  I  tell  them  positively  1  " 

"  Oh,  it  is  hard  !  "  murmured  Patricia,  as  with  a  heavy  sob 
she  turned  away  to  the  window,  where  she  stood  looking 
vacantly  at  the  sunshine  lying  on  the  grass  and  budding  trees, 
thinking  how  green  everything  looked,  and  what  a  lovely  day 
it  was  out  of  doors,  and  oh  !  if  she  could  only  escape  into  the 
freedom  and  peace  of  nature  once  more  ! 

They  left  her  to  her  own  meditations  for  a  moment,  and  then 


330  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE? " 

Mr.  Hamley  went  up  to  her  and  took  her  by  the  hands  in  a 
friendly  way  enough. 

"  Better-minded,  young  lady  ?  will  you  inform  us  now,  and 
confess  all  you  know  about  it  1 "  he  said. 

She  looked  into  his  face  pathetically. 

"  I  must  not ! "  she  sobbed,  and  hid  her  face  on  his  shoulder. 

"  Dear  !  dear  ! "  said  Mr.  Hamley,  whom  the  action  concili- 
ated, patting  her  head.  "  I  would  give  that  hundred  pounds 
twice  over  that  this  had  never  happened !  Poor  young  lady  ! 
How  came  you  to'  be  such  a  fool,  my  dear  ?  I  am  sorry  for 
you,  by  George  I  am  !  but  you  are  too  big  a  fo®l  to  live ;  you 
positively  are ! " 

And  then  he  put  her  away.  He  did  not  like  to  pet  her 
before  his  wife,  and  when  she  had  been  such  a  wicked  girl  too  ; 
nor  to  let  Dora  feel,  as  he  phrased  it,  "  as  if  her  nose  was  put 
out  of  joint."  So  he  lifted  up  the  miserable  face  and  dropped 
the  poor  nervous  hands ;  but  he  sighed  and  was  very  sorry,  and 
somewhat  ashamed. 

"  Go  to  your  room,  Patricia,"  then  said  Mrs.  Hamley  severely. 
"  Let  me  never  see  your  face  again  till  you  have  confessed,  either 
that  you  have  committed  this  sin  yourself,  or  who  is  your  ac- 
complice. Go,  I  say.  Dora,  leave  her  alone ;  she  is  not  fit  for 
you  to  touch." 

For  Dora,  weeping  real  tears,  frightened  and  remorseful,  but 
not  brave  enough  to  own  to  the  truth,  had  made  as  if  she  would 
have  gone  nearer  to  her,  caressingly 

Patricia  shrank  from  her  visibly. 

"  Yes,  leave  me  alone,"  she  said  in  an  altered  voice. 

Her  aunt  and  Mr.  Hamley  took  the  change  of  manner  and 
accent  to  mean  so  far  a  confession  of  guilt  in  that  she  felt  the 
stainless  purity  of  Dora  as  her  punishment ;  and  it  thrilled  the 
poor  lady  like  an  electric  shock.  But  Dora,  flushing  to  her 
temples,  drew  back — her  eyes  bent  on  the  ground.  She  made 
a  beautiful  picture  at  the  moment  of  innocence  blushing  yet 
pitiful  for  guilt ;  while  Patricia  was  that  guilt,  conscious  of  its 
own  enormity  and  respecting  innocence.  So  it  seemed  to  the 
two  looking  on  ;  and  not  an  angel  from  heaven  could  just  then 
have  shown  them  the  reverse  of  the  shield. 

"Good-bye,  aunt;  you  have  misjudged  me.  I  am  innocent 
of  all  knowledge,  all  offence  in  this/'  said  Patricia,  preparing  to 
leave  the  room. 


THE  ORDEAL.  331 

"  Leave  me  silently,"  said  Aunt  Hamley,  rising  and  waving 
her  away.     "  Do  not  dare  to  come  into  my  presence  again  till 
you  are  invited  ;  and  consider  yourself  regarded  as  a  thief — do" 
you  hear  the  word  ? — as  a  thief,  Patricia,  till  you  have  confessed 
and  made  restitution." 

Without  another  word  Patricia  went ;  and  when  she  had 
gone  Mrs.  Hamley's  courage  of  anger  gave  way,  and  she  fell 
fainting  into  a  chair. 

"  That  cursed  girl !  she  will  be  the  death  of  her  aunt ! n  said 
Mr.  Hamley  savagely. 

Providence  might  take  the  old  lady  in  an  orderly  manner  as 
soon  as  it  liked,  but  he  did  not  want  her  to  die  in  a  sudden 
muddled-up  way  like  this.  When  she  went  he  hoped  to  have 
all  things  done  respectably  'and  with  befitting  state — a  doctor 
in  daily  attendance  and  a  physician  for  special  consultation ;  a 
nurse  sent  from  the  best  training  school  in  London,  and  daily 
inquiries  at  the  house  by  all  the  neighbourhood  ;  Mrs.  Hamley's 
health  the  talk  of  the  place,  the  topic  of  the  hour.  To  go  off 
in, a  fit  of  rage  because  her  niece  had  forged  his  name  to  a 
cheque  was  by  no  means  the  kind  of  exit  he  had  at  heart  for 
his  aged  lady- wife ;  wherefore  he  said  again  "  That  cursed  girl !" 
and  Dora  was  too  much  scared  to  put  in  a  word  of  conciliation. 
Then  he  looked  at  Dora  and  almost  whispered,  his  voice  was  so 
soft :  "  Oh,  you  best  and  dearest !  what  should  we  do  without 
you!' 

"  Dear  thing  !"  was  Dora's  oft-repeated  formula  as  she  leant 
over  Mrs.  Hamley  crying. 

"  Don't  cry,  Dora,"  said  Mr.  Hamley ;  but  he  himself  was 
moved.  He  had  felt  deeply  the  whole  affair,  and  hated  the 
part  he  felt  compelled  to  play ;  but  he  was  curiously  torn 
between  anger  and  pity,  and  scarcely  seemed  to  know  his  own 
mind  somehow.  "  She  is  not  worth  one  of  those  pretty  tears  of 
yours  ;  you  are  too  good  to  pity  her,  and  yet — heaven  forgive 
me  for  my  weakness  ! — I  am  sorry  for  her  too;"  he  continued, 
turning  away  his  head.  "  She  is  a  fine  young  woman,  if  a  trifle 
rough ;  and  I  cannot  think  how  she  came  to  do  such  a  dirty 
trick,  or  who  could  have  put  her  up  to  it." 

"  It  is  all  a  mystery,  and  we  might  as  well  give  it  up — it  will 
never  be  found  out,"  lisped  Dora  sobbing,  as  Bignold  came 
hurrying  in  to  attend  her  fainting  mistress. 


332  ''  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

UNDER  HOME  ARREST. 

tHIS  then  was  where  her  love  for  Dora,  and  her  loyalty  to 
her  promise,  had  landed  Patricia — into  actual  if  inno- 
cent complicity  with  a  crime  ;  and  with  the  accusation 
of  having  committed  that  crime  herself  fully  justified  by  appear- 
ances. As  she  sat  in  her  own  room,  mournfully  trying  to 
understand  something  of  the  position  in  which  she  found  her- 
self, but  only  more*  and  more  bewildered  by  the  contra- 
dictions of  life  and  teaching,  the  old  question  forced  itself 
once  more  before  her :  what  was  right  1  She  had  lived  but  a 
few  years  in  this  world  as  yet,  and  of  these  few,  but  a  little  while 
in  an  artificial  state  of  society,  yet  she  had  seen  enough  to  know 
that  society  and  elementary  morality  are  at  war  together,  and 
that  conventional  virtue  is  not  the  virtue  of  the  law,  nor  the 
prophets,  nor  yet  of  Christ.  She  had  been  taught  to  revere 
truth,  loyalty,  and  uprightness;  and  she  found  herself  dis- 
graced for  her  adherence  to  her  old  lessons.  She  saw  how 
Dora  had  made  her  place  soft  and  warm  by  suppleness,  untruth, 
disloyalty  ;  how  she  was  loved  and  praised  through  the  very 
sins  which  she  herself  had  been  always  taught  to  hate  and  shun  ; 
how  her  faults  had  prospered  with  her,  and  how  by  them  she 
had  made  herself  happy  and  been  the  cause  of  happiness  to 
others.  '  She  knew  quite  well  that  for  her  own  part  she  had 
disturbed  the  quiet  ordering  of  the  Hamleys'  home  ever  since 
she  had  come  into  it ;  and  that  her  very  faithfulness  to  hei 
sense  of  right  had  been  a  sin  and  an  annoyance. 

What  then  was  true,  what  was  right,  in  this  strange  world 
of  ours  ?  Christian  practice  1 — surely  not !  at  least  in  the  esti- 
mation of  Christian  professors.  Truth  and  sincerity  ? — truth 
and  sincerity  had  alienated  her  aunt's  affection  from  her  from 
the  first,  and  had  finished  by  landing  her  here.  Constancy, 
courage,  magnanimity,  whatever  virtue  she  had  learnt  in  early 
youth  from  her  uncle — whatever  had  stood  foremost  in  a  good 


UNDER  HOME  ARREST.  333 

man's  simple  code — she  had  proved  to  be  all  wrong  in  practice ; 
and  if  Dora  was  right  and  if  Aunt  Hamley  was  right,  wise  living 
for  men  and  women  means  the  practical  denial  of  all  the  right- 
eous lessons  taught  the  young.  And  why  then,  she  thought 
perplexedly,  are  people  taught  when  young  things  which 
the  world  will  not  let  them  practise,  when  grown  up  ?  and 
which  if  they  do  practise,  they  get  themselves  and  others 
into  trouble,  and  are  blamed  all  round  for  folly  or  for  fault  ? 

The  day  wore  on  with  a  scarcely  conscious  passing  of  time. 
The  girl  had  not  moved  from  the  place  where  she  had  firsfc  sat 
down.  All  her  old  life  passed  like  a  series  of  pictures  before 
her,  and  her  uncle's  words  came  back  as  the  pages  of  a  closed 
book  which  she  was  reading  again.  She  seemed  to  almost  see 
him  as  he  had  looked  and  smiled  when  he  lived.  She  seemed 
to  hear  his  voice  calling  to  her  so  cheerily,  "  Hj  there,  my  love !" 
with  the  wind  off  the  sea  blowing  through  his  silver  hair  and 
freshening  the  ruddy  tinge  on  his  kind  face.  And  Gordon  too 
how  vividly  he  stood  out  from  the  mists  of  distance  in  his 
young  man's  strength  and  wholesome  beauty,  his  love,  his 
faithfulness,  his  courage,  his  high  sense  of  honour,  and  his  ready 
submission  to  the  better  law  of  discipline  !  How  she  loved  him  ! 
how  she  felt  to  stretch  out  her  hand  to  him  now  in  her  affliction, 
as  if  she  could  have  called  his  spirit  to  her  by  the  very  force  of 
her  yearning,  the  very  need  of  her  love !  True,  for  all  these 
months  she  had  had  no  word  from  him ;  but  she  did  not  doubt 
him.  Her  letter  had  miscarried,  or  his  had  missed  its  way. 
She  longed  with  a  child's  longing  for  home  and  mother  to  hear 
from  him,  to  make  sure  that  he  lived  :  that  he  loved  her  if  he 
lived  she  had  no  need  of 'outward  assurance.  She  knew  that  ; 
but  oh !  if  she  could  but  hear  from  him,  hold  his  letter  in  her 
hands,  and  read  the  words  his  hand  had  traced,  how  com- 
forted she  would  be  !  Yet  nothing  of  her  longing  sprang  from 
or  was  mixed  with  doubt  or  fear.  It  was  only  the  yearning  of 
love  strengthened  by  loneliness  and  sorrow. 

Amidst  all  the  grief  and  dismay,  the  mental  perplexity  of  her 
state,  Patricia  had  however  a  strange  feeling  of  freedom.  Her 
body  was  in  prison  but  her  soul  felt  free.  She  was  as  if 
restored  .to  herself  and  the  past.  Banished  from  the  life  of  Abbey 
Holme,  she  had  gone  back  to  the  old  days  at  Barsands  ;  yet 
had  gone  back  with  a  difference.  She  was  no  longer  the  Patricia 


'  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE? " 

who  had  lived  like  bird  in  bower,  merry,  unsuspecting,  fearless, 
and  ignorant.  She  had  tasted  of  the  bitter  fruit  of  knowledge 
since  those  young  days  of  hers,  and  no  one  who  has  once  done 
that  can  re-inhabit  the  old  self.  Nevertheless  she  was  free  ; 
and  gradually,  as  has  been  said,  her  mind  warped  away  from 
the  tangled  speculations  of  her  first  mood  to  the  loved  images, 
the  sweet  remembrances  of  her  uncle  and  Gordon,  and  her  child- 
hood's happy  life  by  the  dear  old  rugged  Cornish  coast. 

So  time  passed  and  the  hours  crept  on,  but  no  one  came  to 
disturb  her.  She  did  not  herself  know  how  the  day  was  pass- 
ing till  the  evening  began  to  fall ;  and  then,  as  she  had  had  no 
food,  she  began  to  get  hungry.  Hitherto  the  kind  of  trance  in 
which  she  had  been  had  stopped  all  physical  consciousness. 
Now,  however,  she  came  back  to  herself  and  reality,  to  find 
herself  not  at  Barsands  with  her  uncle  and  Gordon,  but  sitting 
by  the  window  of  her  own  room  at  Abbey  Holme,  with  her 
arms  and  hands  numbed  by  being  so  long  clasped  in  each  other 
as  they  rested  on  the  window-sill,  and  her  neck  and  iorehead 
stiff  from  the  long  lying  of  her  head  on  them — to  find  herself, 
not  the  loved  of  old  and  young,  but  deserted  and  in  disgrace,  a 
prisoner  on  parole  and  a  presumed  forger. 

Aunt  Hamley  it  was  who  had  ordained  this  penance  of  the 
senses.  She  thought  it  might  have  a  salutary  effect  on  the 
proud,  rebellious  spirit ;  and  she  calculated  on  her  girlish  fear 
when  Patricia  should  find  herself  deserted  by  the  whoie  family, 
and  left  as  if  she  was  no  longer  one  of  them.  Perhaps  that 
would  bring  her  to  her  right  mind,  she  thought,  and  induce  her 
to  confess.  Had  any  one  suggested  to  the  properly-intentioned 
lady  that  she  was  simply  torturing  her  niece,  she  Vould  have 
denied  the  accusation  indignantly.  Torture  meant  the  thumb- 
screw or  the  bootikins,  the  rack  or  the  wheel,  not  merely  trying 
to  break  down  the  spirit  of  a  naughty  girl  by  fasting  and  deser- 
tion. 

On  his  side  Mr.  Hamley  would  have  sent  her  food,  and  would 
have  even  added  a  generous  glass  of  wine  to  help  her  to  bear 
her  disagreeable  position  better.  There  was  a  certain  hospitable 
openhandedness  about  the  man  which  would  have  prevented 
his  adding  hunger  to  his  punishment  of  a  delinquent,  especially 
if  a  pretty  girl ;  but  Mrs.  Hamley  was  a  woman,  and  small 
indignities  come  easier  by  nature  to  a  woman  than  to  a  man — 


HOME  AfeREST.  335 

<. 

adding  pin-pricks  to  sabre-cut  not  being  out  of  the  feminine  line, 
speaking  by  majorities. 

Patricia,  wakened  up  to  herself  and  her  sense  of  discomfort, 
nevertheless  stayed  loyally  where  she  was.  True  ;  she  was  cold . 
and  hungry.  She  had  no  light,  no  food ;  but  if  she  had  been 
left  to  starve,  she  would  have  starved  rather  than  have  dis- 
obeyed her  aunt's  command  and  ventured  into  the  forbidden 
quarter  of  the  house.  So  the  hours  passed  and  the  evening 
stole  on  into  night.  The  stars  came  out  and  the  moon  rose  up. 
She  knew  that  by  the  reflection  on  the  blank  white  wall  which 
was  her  sole  window  prospect.  Then  she  heard  the  softly-fall- 
ing bolts  and  bars ;  the  sharp  double  bell  summoning  the  ser- 
vants to  prayers — "  and  forgive  us  our  trespasses  as  we  forgive 
them  that  trespass  against  us,"  one  of  the  clauses ;  with  perhaps 
St.  Paul's  chapter  on  charity  for  the  reading,  or  the  story  of 
Ananias  and  Sapphira.  After  which  she  heard  the  rustling  of 
her  aunt's  rich  black  silk  sweeping  majestically  through  the 
passage  and  past  her  own  disgraced  door,  and  Mr.  Hamley's 
lordly  step  striding  after  it'.  And  by  this  she  knew  that  the 
Abbey  Holme  household  had  gone  to  bed,  and  that  she  should 
see  none  of  them  for  this  night — the  servants  had  evidently 
been  told  not  to  go  to  her  room — and  that  Dora  too  had  gone 
to  rest  peacefully  like  the'others ;  Dora,  quiet,  amiable,  sympa- 
thetic, a  little  mournful  perhaps  to  suit  the  sombre  mood  of  the 
moment,  but  making  the  life  and  charm  of  the  evening  as  usual, 
blessing  and  blessed,  and  secretly  rejoicing  in  her  escape  from  a 
disagreeable  position  ab  the  price  of  her  friend's  ruin  and  on  the 
calculation  of  her  devotion. 

And  at  this  thought  it  seemed  to  Patricia  as  if  she  should  die 
of  shame  and  heartbreak.  It  seemed  to  her  so  infinitely  shock- 
ing that  Dora  should  have  done  this  wicked  thing.  The  one 
she  had  so  tenderly  loved,  had  worshipped  with  all  her  girlish 
power  of  admiration  as  excelling  in  womanly  loveliness  and 
grace,  to  have  proved  herself  this  treacherous  Delilah  !  Had 
it  been  an  accident,  a  chance  thing  the  real  issues  of  which  had 
been  unknown  to  Dora  as  to  herself,  she  would  have  borne  the 
burden  of  it  better ;  but  it  was  the  plot,  the  premeditated 
cruelty  and  treachery  that  seemed  to  her  so  frightful,  so  incon- 
ceivably hideous  !  It  was  not  for  herself  she  was  breaking  her 
heart ;  it  was  for  the  destruction  of  her  ideal,  the  death  of  her 
love. 


336  "WHAT  WOULD  vor  ro,  T.OVE?" 

After  all  this  was  the  tragedy,  not  her  own  disaster.  Time 
would  repair  that ;  and  even  if  it  did  not — she  was  innocent, 
and  no  appearances  could  alter  that  blessed  tact.  But  time 
would  not  restore  what  had  fallen  into  dust  to-day.  The  gra- 
'  ciousness,  the  love,  the  beauty,  and  all  that  grew  out  of  these 
in  her  own  heart — all  had  gone  into  ruin  together  !  No  wonder 
she  felt  as  if  her  heart  would  break.  It  was  a  wreck  more 
pitiful  than  the  wreck  of  the  Mermaid — a  death  as  real  as  and 
almost  more  sad  than  the  death  of  her  uncle  ! 

Presently  the  door  of  her  room  softly  opened  and  Dora  came 
stealing  in.  She  had  coaxed  Bignold  to  bring  up  some  food 
for  the  poor  prisoner;  which  the  maid,  knowing  only  that 
Patricia  was  in  disgrace  and  thinking  it  "  an  awful  shame  that 
she  should  be  left  to  starve  like  this,"  was  glad  enough  to  do. 
So  Dora  stole  into  her  room  wrapped  as  usual  in  her  soft 
luxurious  furs  and  cashmeres,  with  her  golden  hair  loose  on  her 
shoulders,  and  her  small  hands  holding  a  tray  laden  with  good 
things ;  a  very  fair  enchanting  picture,  but  one  which  had  no 
more  fascination  for  Patricia. 

Patricia  shook  back  her  falling  hair,  cleared  her  dreamy  eyes, 
and  rose  to  her  feet.  She  felt  more  humiliated  to  be  visited 
thus  by  Dora  as  her  good  angel  than  at  any  other  circumstance 
of  this  dreadful  day. 

"  Oh,  dear,  dear  child !  how  sorry  I  am  for  you  and  for 
everything  !  How  cold  you  must  be,  and  how  hungry  !  "  began 
Dora,  setting  down  the  tray  and  gliding  up  to  Patricia  who 
was  standing  by  the  dressing-table.  "  See  dear,  I  have  brought 
you  something  to  eat :  why,  you  must  be  half-starved  !  " 

"  I  will  not  eat  it,"  said  Patricia,  turning  aside  her  head 
and  putting  off  Dora's  hands  which  she  had  clasped  round  her 
arm. 

"  Not  eat,  Patricia ! — why  not  t  You  have  had  nothing  all 
day  !  Are  you  going  to  starve  yourself  to  death  ? " 

"  I  am  my  aunt's  prisoner ;  I  will  not  eat,  nor  go  out  of  my 
room  till  she  allows  me  to  do  so,"  said  Patricia.  "  And,  Dora, 
I  do  not  want  you  to  come  and  see  me,"  she  added.  "  You 
come  secretly,  against  aunt's  wishes;  and  I  have  done  with 
secrets  now,  once  and  for  all." 

"  You  are  cruel ! "  said  Dora  beginning  to  ciy. 

They  were  not  sham  tears — she  was  really  very  sorry  for  the 


UNDER  HOME  ARREST.  337 

pass  to  which  things  had  come ;  but  what  could  she  do  ? 
Patricia  would  not  be  killed  ;  after  a  little  while  she  would  be 
taken  into  favour  again — as  much  favour  as  she  could  ever 
receive  at  Abbey  Holme — and  all  would  be  forgotten  and  for- 
given. And  she,  Dora,  would  do  her  best  to  put  her  well  be- 
fore the  authorities,  and  to  give  a  fine-sounding  name  to  her 
delinquency.  But  if  she  were  to  tell  the  truth,  what  would  be 
the  result  ?  Simply  ruin !  Wise  little  Dora  reflected  that 
Patricia's  temporary  discomfort  was  to  be  preferred  to  her  own 
everlasting  destruction  ;  and  if  the  girl  would  only  be  amenable 
to  reason,  and  like  any  other  sensible  creature,  hr;  term  of  trial 
would  be  shortened  and  its  bitterness  sweetened  ;  and  she 
might — who  knows  1 — come  out  as  a  heroine  when  all  was  over. 

But  Patricia  was  not  like  any  other  sensible  creature.  She 
had  her  own  Spartan  code  which  was  quite  opposed  to  Dora's 
favourite  worldly  wisdom,  and  she  chose  to  stand  by  it,  hard 
as  it  was,  rather  than  be  guided  into  her  former  friend's  softer 
ways. 

"  I  am  not  cruel,  Dora  ;  but  I  understand  you  now— I  never 
did  before  to-day,"  she  answered ;  and  by  the  dim  light  of  the 
little  chamber- lamp  that  Dora  had  brought  in  she  looked  almost 
heroic  in  her  power  and  sorrow,  her  steadfastness  and  her  stern- 
ness— like  a  maid  of  another  race  and  time. 

"You  are  doing  me  injustice,"  said  Dora,  feebly  fencing  with 
her  rebuke. 

"  Can  II"  asked  Patricia.  "  After  you  have  led  me  into 
a  crime  by  my  love  for  you,  by  my  sympathy  with  your  diffi- 
culties, ?,nd  by  your  own  falsehood,  Dora — led  me  into  a  crime 
and  left  me  to  such  disgrace  as  this — can  I  be  unjust  to  youl 
What  can  I  think  of  you  1  and  what  may  I  not  call  you  !  " 

"  Hush,  Patricia !  you  frighten  me ! "  said  Dora  cowering. 

"  Let  your  own  conscience  frighten  you,  not  me ;  if  only  it 
could  frighten  you  into  doing  the  right ! "  said  Patricia. 
"  How  can  you  live  in  such  a  state  as  you  must  be  in  1  That 
is  the  wonder  to  me  !  " 

"  You  are  mad,  Patricia  !  how  can  I  act  differently  t "  cried 
Dora.  "  Do  you  want  me  to  be  ruined  1 " 

"  No,  I  want  you  to  be  saved — to  save  yourself  out  of  this 
sea  of  deception  into  which  you  have  got.  You  are  being  ship- 
wrecked in  it,  Dora,  for  time  and  eternity  ! " 


338  "  WHAT  WOULt)  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  I  dare  not  tell ! "  she  said ;  and  then  the  coward  fear  that 
always  possessed  her  came  uppermost,  and  she  gasped  out 
.piteously  ;  ''Are  you  going  to  betray  uie,  Patricia  1  You  had 
better  kill  me!" 

Patricia  looked  at  her  with  a  steadfast,  sorrowful,  and  yet 
half-scornful  pity. 

"  Can  you  ask  me  1 "  she  said.  "  Do  you  not  know  me 
better  than  that,  Dora  ?  If  I  were  left  here  to  die  by  inches 
you  need  not  be  afraid  of  me." 

Dora  flung  herself  against  her  bosom,  and  threw  her  arms 
round  her.  "  You  are  so  good  and  brave  ! "  she  said,  sobbing 
passionately. 

But  Patricia  put  her  away  with  resolute  quiet  strength. 

"  Don't,  Dora !  I  cannot  bear  it !  I  would  rather  you  did 
not  thank  me,  please ;  it  is  too  shocking  to  me,"  she  said  in 
broken  sentences. 

She  could  bear  her  own  humiliation  better  than  Dora's — her 
own  wound  better  than  her  former  friend's  craven  cowardice. 

"  Oh,  how  you  hate  me ! "  said  Dora  half  pettishly,  half 
pathetically. 

Patricia  did  not  answer.  She  felt  the  falseness  of  this 
attempt  at  softening  her,  and  let  it  pass.  The  two  girls  had 
changed  places.  It  was  the  adorer  who  was  now  the  judge, 
the  adored  who  besought. 

"  Now,  Dora,  go ;  I  do  not  want  to  see  any  one,  to  have  any- 
thing done  for  me  till  my  aunt  orders  it,"  said  Patricia.  "  I 
tell  you  I  have  washed  my  hands  of  all  secrets  for  ever  ;  and  if 
you  come  in  to  see  me  again,  though  you  do  it  in  kindness,  I 
shall  tell  my  aunt.  What  I  know  I  will  keep  sacred  to  the  last, 
but  nothing  more — nothing  new." 

"  I  believe  you  are  mad !  "-  said  Dora,  rather  angrily  for  all 
her  gratitude  and  shame  and  late  emotion. 

It  was  a  new  experience  to  her  to  be  repulsed,  and  she  did 
not  like  it. 

"  Yes,  I  am  beginning  to  think  that  truth  and  loyalty  are 
looked  on  as  little  better  than  madness  by  you  all  here,"  said 
Patricia  ;  "  but  it  is  a  madness  I  choose  rather  than  the  con- 
trary. So  good  night :  thank  you  for  your  good  intentions  ; 
but  I  will  have  nothing." 

"  And  I  am  to  carry  this  ridiculous  tray  back  again ;  and  it 


tTNDER  HOiTE  ARREST.  339 

is  so  heavy,  and  hurts  my  hands !  "   said  Dora  with  a  helpless 
look.  • 

"  I  am  sorry  I  cannot  carry  it  for  you,  Dora — it  is  heavy  for 
your  little  hands,"  said  Patricia  sympathetically  and  in  her  na- 
tural voice  ani  manner. 

"  I  can  get  round  her  in  time  ! "  thought  Dora  smiling  to 
herself. 

But  she  calculated  on  insufficient  data.  That  something 
which  when  it  once  breaks  is  irreparable,  had  snapped  in 
Patricia's  heart ;  and  her  love  had  died,  and  was  buried  in  the 
same  grave  as  her  belief  and  her  respect. 

So  Dora,  making  a  sorrowful  face,  took  back  her  burden  ot 
good  food  ;  leaving  her  door  ajar  to  catch  Bignold  on  her  exit 
from  her  mistress,  to  tell  her  to  try  her  power  with  Patricia 
and  make  her  eat  something. 

But  Bignold  failed  as  entirely  as  herself ;  though  the  maid 
did  what  the  friend  had  not  done — made  the  prisoner  cry  like 
a  child.  She  was  brave  and  strong  and  steadfast,  but  she  was 
only  a  girl  yet ;  only  nineteen  ;  and  the  day  had  tired  her 
terribly  ;  and  most  of  all  Dora  and  this  last  scone  had  shaken 
her  very  soul.  And  then  she  was  desperately  hungry,  poor 
child  ;  and  feeling  a  little  faint  and  sick  for  want  of  food.  But 
she  held  to  her  word  "Not until  aunt  allows  it  ;  "  and  Bignold 
determined  to  face  her  mistress's  displeasure  to-morrow,  should 
this  cruelty  continue  another  twelve  hours,  and  tell  her  how 
she  had  herself  tried  to  induce  Miss  Kemball  to  eat  some- 
thing, and  how,  though  she  was  half-hungered  and  owned  to  it, 
she  would  have  nothing  till  her  dear  aunt  sent  it. 

"  And  if  that  doesn't  touch  the  old  witch  nothing  will  1 " 
thought  Bignold  indignantly, 

For  though  Patricia  was  no  great  favourite  with  her — she 
was  too  little  "  the  lady  "  according  to  the  definition  of  the 
lady's-maid  to  be  thoroughly  liked — yet  she  was  a  nice  spoken 
young  person  in  her  way,  and  at  all  events  a  woman. 

Bignold  had  her  humanities  lying  like  diamonds  in  quartz 
among  her  professional  crotchets;  and  just  now  she  thought 
her  mistress  the  bigger  sinner  of  the  two,  whatever  Miss  Kem- 
ball's  offence  had  been.  To  treat  a  poor  motherless  creature  in 
this  way — Bignold  held  it  heathenish ;  and  scoffed  at  the  family 
prayers  as  possessing  any  power  of  good  for  hearts  or  livei. 


340  •        "WHAT  WOtTLT>  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  Better  act  like  a  Christian  and  leave  the  prayers  and  the 
Bible  alone,  than  bother  them  all,  night  and  morning,  as  the 
old  lady  did,  and  behave  worse  than  a  heathen  the  day  through," 
said  Bignold  to  the  housekeeper. 

She  was  an  impenitent  kind  of  person  ;  one  ot  those  who 
respect  good  morals  but  make  no  account  of  spirituality.  She 
despised  the  religion  which  is  made  up  of  strictness  in  the 
matter  of  pious  observances,  flanked  by  an  unlimited  accom- 
paniment of  bad  temper  and  uncharitable  feeling  ;  and  often 
used  to  say  that  she  would  rather  folks  did  what  was  right, 
though  they  had  no  "  gifts,"  than  talked  beautiful  and  did 
what  was  wrong. 


THE  OFFER  OF  FORGiVJUSESS.  341 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

THE  OFFER  OF  FORGIVENESS. 

NO  WING  nothing  of  the  pitiful  little  domestic  drama, 
as  Mr.  Hamley  called  it,  which  had  just  been  enacted 
at  Abbey  Holme  and  which  was  even  now  going  on, 
Lord  Merrian  rode  up  to  the  house  as  usual  one  day  during  the 
term  of  Patricia's  home  arrest — lengthening  now  into  three 
weeks.  He  had  been  absent  from  home  for  nearly  a  fortnight ; 
on  a  visit  to  some  friends  of  his  own  conventional  rank  and 
standing ;  where  he  had  seen  among  other  charming  people  a 
bevy  of  pretty  girls  of  suitable  degree — Ladies  Maud  and 
Victoria,  Ethel  and  Ada,  girls  of  good  style,  well-bred,  aristo- 
cratic, and  of  finished  training. 

But  somehow  he  had  not  enjoyed  himself  as  of  old.  At  one 
time  he  would  have  been  supremely  happy  in  these  circum- 
stances. They  would  have  just  suited  him.  He  would  have 
talked  his  fluent  Young  England  radicalism,  while  conscious  in 
every  fibre  of  his  exalted  position,  his  honourable  title,  his 
glittering  prospects,  as  also  of  the  paternal  earls  and  dukes  of 
his  fair  audience  ;  and  he  would  have  lamented  the  sorrows  of 
the  poor  and  the  inequality  of  society  with  a  pathetic  intona- 
tion in  his  sweet  voice,  while  wearing  the  best  fitting  coat 
Poole  could  turn  out,  and  with  the  most  exquisite  little  bouquet 
of  choice  exotics  in  his  button-hole  to  be  had  from  the  stove- 
houses.  He  would  have  spoken  eloquently  of  the  need  for 
some  grand  crusade  against  the  half-heartedness  of  the  age,  and 
how  he  longed  to  see  some  stirring  protest  made  against  our 
habits  of  demoralizing  luxury,  our  damning  love  of  pleasure, 
with  our  poorer  brethren  helpless  and  degraded  at  our  gates ; 
and  then  he  would  have  gone  to  the  opera  and  given  his  guinea 
for  his  stall  as  a  young  nobleman  should,  and  may  be,  he 
would  have  calculated  his  distance  to  a  nicety,  and  taken  his 
hansom  cab  the  "  long  mile"  which  means  no  extra  fare. 
All  this"  was  of  the  nature  of  the  man  j  a  nature  of  kindly 


342  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

thoughts  and  a  lack  of  earnest  resolves;  with  good  intellectual 
abilities  apt  to  exhale  themselves  in  words,  and  the  fatal  mis- 
take of  accepting  emotional  thought  for  purposeful  endeavour. 

And  the  young  ladies — the  better  gifted  among  them  at 
least — would  have  listened  to  him  sympathetically:  and  some 
of  them,  to  whom  his  fine  eyes  and  distinguished  air  counted 
for  virtues,  would  have  thought  him  a  consecrated  leader  of 
men  and  one  of  the  future  saviours  of  society.  They  would 
not  have  foreseen  him  as  he  would  become  in  a  tew  years' 
time,  a  contented,  easy-going  father  of  a  family,  who  had  sown 
his  wild  oats  betimes— and  those  wild  oats  of  principles  only, 
not  vices ;  a  portly,  good-natured  kind  of  man,  thinking  the 
world  a  jolly  kind  of  place  after  all  for  one  who  had  kept  his 
digestion  in  order  and  his  banker's  book  well  in  hand  ;  and  as 
firmly  convinced  as  Mr.  Hamley  himself,  that  those  were  suc- 
cessful who  ought  to  win,  and  that  when  men  fail  it  is  because 
they  have  not  the  stuff  in  them  to  succeed ;  an  hereditary 
legislator  who  would  look  back  to  his  enthusiasm  for  freedom 
as  a  craze  honourable  to  bis  heart  but  young,  very  young  ;  and 
who  when  the  time  fame  for  radical  reforms  in  Parliament 
would  shelter  hiinseh  behind  constitutional  policy  and  the 
difficulties  of  statesmanship,  for  the  one  part — when  the  rights 
of  labour  were  urged  by  those  who  laboured  on  his  own  land, 
would  put  forward  his  steward  and  his  agent,  for  the  other  ; 
who  would  be  ever  and  always  the  Spenlow  of  good  intentions 
who  would,  but  for  that  ubiquitous  and  immovable  Jorkins 
who  would  not.  Alas !  that  so  many  bright  flames  should  burn 
down  into  such  fat  darkness  as  this  I  that  prosperity  should 
prove  such  a  benumbing  Circe,  and  that  maturity  should  so  often 
drop  the  heroic  pararble  of  youth  ! 

As  it  was  however,  this  visit  of  his,  though  he  was  sur- 
rounded by  nice  girls  of  his  own  caste  and  made  much  of  as 
the  future  Earl  of  Dovedale,  did  not  please  Lord  Merrian.  He 
found  himself  incessantly  comparing  his  pretty  but  colourless 
audience  with  the  girl  whose  enthusiasm  stirred  his  own  so 
powerfully,  whose  sense  of  truth  and  wholeness  of  nature 
seemed  made  to  be  the  spur  of  his  weaker  and  more  lagging 
soul.  He  had  got  into  the  habit  of  thinking  of  Patricia  as  his 
Egeria.  He  once  spoke  of  her  to  Lady  Maud  as  his  Egeria ; 
and  when  Lady  Maud  asked  "  Who  is  Egeria  1 "  he  laughed 


THE  OFFER   OF  FORGIVENESS.  343 

and  said,  "  Was  ?  a  nymph  ; "  and  would  give  no  farther  ex- 
planation. 

He  was  really  and  honestly  in  love  with  her ;  and  it  was 
with  the  best  part  of  him  that  he  loved  her.  He  felt  that 
clearly  enough  ]  and  as  he  had  at  last  won  the  consent  of  his 
father,  arid  of  his  mother  the  countess  too,  after  a  longer  strug- 
gle— should  Mr.  Hamley  give  the  dower  for  which  they  stipul- 
ated— he  had  only  to  be  quite  sure  of  himself  to  take  the  final 
plunge. 

This  visit  to  the  Duke  of  Burton  fixed  his  convictions.  He 
was  in  love  with  Patricia  Kemball ;  no  one  else  delighted  him, 
no  one  else  appealed  to  him  as  did  she.  He  would  make  her 
the  offer  of  his  hand  and  his  life,  and  he  did  not  anticipate  that 
he  should  be  refused.  But  before  speaking  to  her  he  would  ad- 
dress himself  to  Mrs.  Hamley.  LordMerrian  was  a  gentleman 
emphatically,  from  head  to  heel ;  and  moreover  he  Wcis  so  sure 
of  his  game  he  could  afford  to  deliberate  and  to  do  'things  in 
good  style. 

It  was  then  with  more  than  the  intention  of  paving  an  ordi- 
nary morning  call  that  he  rode  up  to  Abbey  Holme  to-day  ;  and 
with  more  than  ordinary  exultation  that  he  saw  himself  once 
more  in  the  gorgeous  crimson  and  gold  drawing-room  of  the 
prosperous  owner. 

Mrs.  Hamley  and  Miss  Drummond  were  alone.  Lord  Mer- 
rian's  eyes  looked  round  in  vain  for  his  Egeria  :  only  the  tall, 
thin,  pinched,  but  perfectly  lady-like  figure  of  Mrs.  Hamley  and 
the  gracious  presence  of  pretty  Dora  met  him  ;  but  the  clear 
eyes  and  noble  bearing  of  the  woman  he  loved  were  not  to  be 
seen. 

He  spoke  a  few  words  to  Mrs.  Hamley,  and  she  was  conscious 
at  the  first  glance,  the  first  sound  of  his  voice,  that  something 
more  than  usual  animated  him  .to-day,  and  that  his  visit  was 
not  merely  one  of  ceremony.  He  looked  half-embarrassed  and 
half-important ;  and  there  was  a  wistful  expression  about  his 
eyes  that  seemed  to  presage  confession  and  emotion.  He  was 
almost  tendoi1  in  his  manner  to  her  :  had  not  she  too  something 
of  his  darling  to  glorify  her '? — and  he  seemed  to  forget  that 
Dora  Drummond  was  a  young  woman,  and  a  pretty  one,  to 
whom  he  had  once  paid  marked  attention,  in  the  general  family 
benevolence  with  which  he  classed  her  as  part  of  Patricia,  as  he 
had  classed  Mrs.  Hamley. 


344 


WHAT  WOULD  VOIT  DO,  LOVE?" 


Was  it  really  true  that  the  grand  coup  for  which  she  would 
have  given  a  handful  of  her  best  remaining  days  was  on  the 
point  of  accomplishment  ?  thought  Mrs.  Hamley.  Should  she 
live  to  see  her  niece  Lady  Merrian,  future  Countess  of  Dovedale, 
and  the  mistress  of  the  Quest  ?  How  trivial  this  last  little  mis- 
demeanor of  hers  had  suddenly  become  !  A  child's  credulous 
complicity:  a  child's  mistaken  loyalty!  She  had  been  pun- 
ished as  a  child,  but  she  should  be  forgiven  as  a  woman.  My 
Lady  Merrian  might  do  worse  things  than  present  a  forged 
cheque  and  refuse  to  tell  for  whom,  and  yet  be  forgiven  ! 

Presently  Lord  Merrian  asked  for  Miss  Kemball,  with  a  deli- 
cate but  delicious  lingering  on  the  name  that  was  like  the 
softest  music  to  the  ears  of  Mrs.  Hamley. 

Her  pale  and  peevish  face  looked  up  with  almost  a  light  on 
it  as  she  answered  :  "  I  am  sorry  to  say  the  dear  girl  is  not  very 
well,  and  keeping  her  room  at  present." 

"  Nothing  serious  ?  "  asked  Lord  Merriau  anxiously. 

"  No,  nothing  serious,  thank  God ! — only  a  cold.  Girls," 
with  a  ghastly  smile,  "  are  always  taking  cold." 

"  I  hope  it  is  nothing  worse,"  said  Lord  Merrian  uneasily. 
"  She  is  too  precious  to  all  of  us  to  be  suffered  to  fall  ill,"  he 
added. 

"  You  are  very  kind,  Lord  Merrian,"  Mrs.  Hamley  answered 
with  a  little  inclination  of  her  head  ;  ami  Dora,  knowing  that 
her  best  policy  now  was  self-effacement,  quietly  left  the  room  ; 
and  in  so  doing  took  credit  to  herself  on  Patricia's  side,  and 
held  herself  to  have  all  but  atoned  for  the  misdeed  which  had 
borne  such  terrible  fruit. 

And  when  she  had  gone  Lord  Merrian  opened  his  case,  and 
formally  proposed  for  Patricia  Kemball's  hand  through  her 
guardian  and  next  of  kin,  Mrs.  Hamley. 

To  which  Mrs.  Hamley,  carefully  concealing  her  exultation, 
gave  her  assent  with  a  certain  womanly  dignity  that  struck  the 
young  lover  as  "  excellent  form,"  and  promised  to  convey  the 
news  to  Patricia,  who  would  doubtless  be  well  enough  to  see  him 
personally  to-morrow,  when  he  proposed  that  he  should  call 
again.  It  was  ail  done  with  good  breeding  and  good  taste  ;  and 
Mrs.  Hamley 's  share  in  the  transaction  showed  the  fact  that  the 
brewer's  wife  was  by  no  means  objectionable,  if  the  brewer  him- 
self was.  Lord  Merrian  called  himself  a  Liberal,  bub  he  was 


THE  OFFER  OF  FORGIVENESS.  345 

glad  that  Patricia — his  Patricia — had  her  aunt's  blood  and  not 
her  aunt's  husband's  in  her  veins,  and  that  she,  not  he,  would 
be  his  relative  by  marriage. 

The  momentous  visit  then  passed  off  with  brilliant  but  sub- 
dued success,  and  Lord  Merrian  rode  home  satisfied  if  disap- 
pointed. Like  all  weak-willed  men,  he  felt  happy  now  that  he 
had  irrevocably  committed  himself,  now  that  hi?  will  had,  as  it 
were,  the  support  of  external  circumstances  ;  but  he  was  des- 
perately sorry  he  had  not  seen  Patricia.  He  longed  to  see  her 
great  grey  eyes  look  into  his  with  their  candid  love,  half  frank 
half  shy,  and  to  hear  her  earnest  innocent  confession,  "  Yes,  I 
love  you."  He  had  been  so  much  occupied  with  making  up  his 
own  mind  he  never  reflected  that  perhaps  he  might  have  missed 
his  way — that  perhaps  she  had  only  the  sister's  love  for  him 
which  would  neither  satisfy  him  nor  impel  her.  It  had  been 
his  own  difficulties  with  which  he  had  struggled — his  difficul- 
ties of  self-certainty  and  diversity  of  social  position ;  but  he 
never  doubted  that  his  path  with  her  would  be  smooth  enough 
when  he  had  absolutely  defined  it  and  made  sure  of  his  own  in- 
tentions. Handsome  young  English  noblemen  scarcely  look  for 
obstacles  when  they  condescend  to  woriien  of  an  inferior  grade. 
The  redundancy  of  which  we  hear  so  much  would  alone  be  suf- 
ficient to  give  them  confidence ;  and  where  the  old,  the  unper- 
senable,  and  the  mediocre  can  choose  very  much  as  they  like, 
the  young,  the  well-looking,  and  the  highly-placed  may  surely 
think  themselves  secure.  Add  to  this,  the  respect  for  rank  in- 
grained in  the  English  character  and  so  ingrained  as  to  be 
accounted  a  virtue,  and  Lord  Merrian  may  stand  acquitted  of 
all  charge  of  foppishness  if  he  believed  in  his  success,  and  took 
counsel  of  his  love  rather  than  of  doubt. 

So  he  rode  home  disappointed  but  happy  ;  and  while  lament- 
ing the  trial  of  his  patience,  and  that  long  delay  of  twenty-four 
hours  before  he  might  hear  the  dear  assurance  his  whole  soul 
was  desiring,  he  was  all  aglow  with  the  anticipation  of  his  de- 
light when  he  should  have  secured  it.  How  tenderly  he  would 
love  her  when  he  should  have  gained  her,  he  thought !  What 
a  life  of  happiness,  of  mental  help,  they  would  have  together  ! 
It  would  be  no  sickly  honeymoon  of  vulgar  endearments  ;  it 
should  be  a  life  worthy  of  a  man  and  woman  who  had  higher 
objects  than  those  of  sensuous  pleasure — of  a  man  and  woman 


346  "  WITAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE ? " 

who  would  give  the  world  an  example  of  noble  living  and  of 
moral  thoroughness.  She  should  be  his  Egeria  and  she  would 
make  of  him  her  Numa— prophet,  king,  and  leader  of  men  ! 
Sweet  thoughts ;  bright  vision's  :  and  the  reality  that  stood 
like  the  angel  in  the  way,  with  drawn  sword  barring  the  gates 
of  that  fair  Eden  ! 

Just  now  the  reality  was  being  transacted  with  a  distinctness 
that  left  no  margin  for  mistakes  ;  and  in  a  manner  who  could 
have  foreseen  1  thought  Mr.  Hamley,  watching  Patricia  curiously 
as  a  kind  of  luzus  natures,  if  indeed  she  was  not  one  of  those 
only  too  common  whom  science  and  the  world  call  mad. 

After  Lord  Merrian's  visit  \vas  brought  to  an  end,  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley  sent  for  Mr.  Hamley  and  dear  Bora;  to  both  of  whom  she 
detailed  what  had  passed  :  namely,  that  Lord  Merrian  had 
made  a  formal  proposal  for  Patricia's  hand,  and  that  she  had 
granted  him  permission  to  ask  the  girl  herself  to-morrow. 

"  I  did  right,  Mr.  Hamley  1 "  she  then  asked  with  unwonted 
meekness. 

It  pleased  her  at  this  supreme  moment  of  success  to  affect 
womanly  submission  and  wifely  inferiority  ;  it  gave  a  zest  to  her 
triumph  and  was  the  pleasant  burden  of  her  golden  crown. 

"  Yes ;  you  did  right,  Lady,"  was  Mr  Hamley's  reply,  made 
pompously  but  with  condescension. 

He  had  caught  her  lead  and  followed  it. 

"  And  now,  I  presume,  this  poor  misguided  child  may  be 
forgiven  ?  "  said  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  She  has  been  punished  suffi- 
ciently for  her  offence  ;  not  too  severely,  considering  its  mag- 
nitude, but  sufficiently.  What  do  you  say  Mr.  Hamley  ? " 

"  Certainly  Lady,  certainly  ;  let  her  be  forgiven,"  said  Mr. 
Hamley.  "  It  would  hardly  do  to  keep  my  Lady  Merrian  con- 
fined to  her  own  room  like  a  naughty  child.  My  Lady  Mer- 
rian ! "  he  added,  rolling  the  words  like  a  delicate  morsel  under 
his  tongue,  "  My  wife's  niece,  my  Lady  Merrian — the  future 
Countess  of  Dovedale. 

How  he  blessed  Providence  and  the  old  admiral's  wiry  con- 
gtitution  that  Mrs.  Hamley  had  been  graciously  pleased  to  live 
until  now  !  Once  let  this  marriage  be  celebrated,  and  the  poor 
conjugal  moth,  having  then  indeed  completed  her  mission,  might 
fold  her  wings  and  leave  her  work  for  the  kindly  hatching  of 
time  and  good  chances. 


THE  OFFER  OF  FORGIVENESS.  347 

"  Go  to  her,  Dora,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley. 

And  Dora  obedient,  rose. 

"  We  must  not  forget  our  Dora  though,  in  our  pleasure  at 
this  great  success,  this  proudest  moment  of  our  lives,  as  I  call 
it,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  looking  at  his  cousin  with  a  strange 
expression  on  his  face.  "  She  is  always  our  first,  hey  Lady  ?  " 

"  Come  here,  child,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  ;  and  poor  Dora,  with 
tears  ot  jealous  disappointment  in  her  eyes— they  looked  beau- 
tirul,  and  like  tears  of  sympathy — knelt  down  by  her  cousin's 
wife 

Mrs.  Hamley  put  her  arms  round  her  bended  neck  and  drew 
her  pretty  head  to  her  bosom.     She  smoothed  the  golden  hair, . 
and  her  lean  hand  lingered  lovingly  on  the  fair  round  face, 
while  she  gazed  at  her  with  maternal  tenderness.     Then  she 
kissed  her  with  what  was  for  her  a  passionate  affection. 

"  I  am  glad  of  this  good  fortune  for  Patricia,"  she  said  in  a 
moved  voice.  "  It  is  very  natural ;  she  is  my  own  flesh  and 
blood,  my  brother's  child,  and  she  has  no  one  in  the  world  to 
look  to  but  myself ;  and  I  may  not  last  long  ;  but  she  can  never 
be  to  me  what  you  are,  my  little  girl — never  take  the  daughter's 
place  that  you  have  filled  from  the  beginning.  God  bless  you, 
rny  Dora  !  the  light  of  my  life,  and  dearer  to  me  than  even  my 
own  !  No,  we  can  never  forget  our  Dora  even  on  this  or  any 
other  day  ot  triumph.  And  please  God,  we  shall  see  such  a 
day  some  time  for  her." 

"  Amen,"  said  Mr.  Hamley ;  with  the  unspoken  proviso, "  I, 
but  not  you." 

Patricia  had  now  been  nearly  three  weeks  under  home  arrest, 
and  for  all  this  time  had  seen  no  one  but  the  housemaid  who 
came  to  arrange  her  room.  Dora  had  not  appeared  again  ;  and 
as  Mrs.  Hamley  had  ordered  a  scanty  kind  of  breakfast  to  be 
taken  to  her  the  next  morning,  Bignold's  advocacy  had  not 
been  needed  ;  so,  wisely  enough,  the  maid  had  forborne  to  in- 
termeddle in  a  matter  where  help  was  not  needed,  and  whence 
she  would  be  sure  to  bring  away  but  burnt  fingers  for  her  pains. 
The  solitude  and  confinement,  the  insufficient  food,  and  the  sor- 
rowful thoughts  that  had  possessed  her  for  all  this  time,  had 
told  on  Patricia's  appearance;  and  there  would  be  small  ditfi 
culty  in  convincing  Lord  Merrian  to-morrow  that  she  had  been, 
and  indeed  was  still  ilL  Looking  at  ker  through  the  lustre  of 


348  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

her  coming  honours  Mrs.  Hamley  was  shocked  and  startled  to 
see  how  ill ;  and  more  than  all  she  was  startled  to  see  how  un- 
utterably sad  she  looked.  Was  this  indeed  Patricia,  that  bright, 
spontaneous,  fearless  girl  who  had  come  into  their  quiet  life 
like  a  whirlwind  ;  whose  very  grief  for  her  beloved  uncle  had 
been  unable  to  subdue  her  young  energies,  and  whose  breezy 
activities  had  reduced  the  subdued,  staid  household  to  general 
despair?  Not  that  there  was  anything  drooping  or  craven 
about  her  even  noAv.  Her  head  was  carried  as  straight,  her 
slender  figure  was  as  upright,  as  before ;  but  all  colour  had 
faded  from  her  hollow  cheeks ;  her  eyes  were  pathetically  large 
and  lustrous,  and  there  were  dark  rings  round  them  that  made 
Mrs.  Hamley's  heart  ache.  Her  hands  too,  which  had  once 
been  so  large  and  strong,  were  fine  now  and  slender ;  and  the 
black  dress,  which  had  been  cut  for  the  best  advantage  of  her 
figure,  hung  in  loose  folds  and  creases  about  her  waist  and 
shoulders. 

A  pang  of  self-reproach  seized  Mrs.  Hamley.  Had  she  over- 
stepped her  duty  ?  Had  she  done  really  what  she  ought  by  this 
unprotected  girl  ?  Could  she  meet  her  brothers  as  a  faithial 
sister  should,  and  pointing  back  beyond  the  grave  to  the  charge 
that  had  been  assigned  her,  claim  from  them,  and  God,  appro- 
bation of  her  work  7  Still,  it  would  not  do  to  give  in.  The 
curse  of  spiritual  pride  clung  like  a  weed  round  the  woman's 
soul.  No,  ifc  would  not  do  to  give  in,  or  to  confess  by  word, 
deed,  or  look,  that  she  had  been  wrong  or  over  hasty. 

Not  rising  from  her  chair,  she  held  out  her  hand  as  Patricia, 
following  Dora,  came  silently  but  steadily  forward.  Patricia 
went  up  to  her  and  put  her  hand  in  hers.  Something  in  her 
throat  choked  her  voice  so  that  she  could  not  speak,  and  even 
Mrs.  Hamley  found  it  difficult  to  say :  "  Good  morning,  Patricia." 

"  Good  morning,  young  lady.  I  hope  I  see  you  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  good  health,  though  I  cannot  say  you  look  it,"  was 
Mr.  Hamley's  salutation,  made  with  many  flourishes  of  his  hands 
and  some  plunges  of  his  well-developed  limbs. 

But  he  meant  it  good-naturedly,  and  so  Patricia  took  it.  It. 
made  a  little  diversion  too,  and  a  healthy  one.  Sentient  ana' 
Mr.  Hamley  did  not  go  together  quite  harmoniously. 

"  Good  morning,  Mr.  Hamley,"  she  said  naturally ;  and 
looked  at  her  aunt,  including  her. 


THE  OFFER  OF  FORGIVENESS.  349 

"  Take  a  chair,  Patricia,  and  sit  down  quietly,"  said  Mrs. 
Hamley.  "  I  have  sent  for  you  to  have  some  grave  talk  with 
you." 

Patricia  took  a  chair  and  sat  down. 

How  large  the  room  looked,  she  thought,  and  how  bright  and 
full  of  gold  and  colour  !  The  mirrors  and  the  gilding  and  the 
upholsterer's  magnificence  all  through  quite  oppressed  her.  She 
would  have  preferred  a  fisherman!s  hut  or  the  poorest  den  of  a 
cottage  at  this  moment  to  all  this  showy  glitter.  Since  her 
banishment  up-stairs  the  present  had  become  dark  to  her,  and 
she  had  lived  so  much  in  her  memories  that  Barsands  and  the 
cottage  had  become  almost  more  real  to  her  than  Abbey  Holme ; 
and  this  grandeur  and  excess  quite  pained  and  dazzled  her  eye- 
sight. Nevertheless,  she  sat  down  quietly,  and  looked  at  her 
aunt,  forcing  her  attention  which  •  was  loose  and  a  little  wan- 
dering. 

"  I  have  had  a  most  unhappy  week,  Patricia,"  began  Aunt 
Hamley  clearing  her  throat.  "  I  may  say  indeed  that  we  have 
all  had  a  most  unhappy  week ;  and  I  suppose  yours  has  not 
been  much  better  ?  " 

"  No,  I  have  been  very  very  miserable,"  said  Patricia  simply. 

"  Are  you  prepared  to  do  what  you  ought  to  have  done  at 
the  first  ?  "  asked  Mrs.  Hamley. 

"  Do  you  mean  tell  for  whom  I  took  the  cheque,  aunt  1 "  said 
Patricia  after  a  pause,  during  which  she  seemed  to  be  searching 
back  in  her  memory.  "  No  ! "  shaking  her  head. 

Her  aunt  frowned. 

"  Come  now,  Lady,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  seeing  that  she  had 
begun  on  the  wrong  tack,  "  shall  we  not  let  bygones  be  by- 
gones, and  no  more  said  about  it  ?  Let  us  suppose  that  your 
niece  has  some  reason  for  her  obstinacy.  It  will  do  us  no 
harm  if  we  suppose  that  she  has  some  good  reason — some  what 
I  call  valid  excuse  ;  and,  believing  this,  let  us  shake  hands  all 
round.  There  are  times  and  seasons  for  everything  ;  and  the 
time  of  forgiveness  has  come  now.  Am  I  right  1 " 

"  You  are  kind,  Mr.  Hamley  ;  you  always  are,"  said  his  wife. 
"vWell,  Patricia,  we  will  do  as  your  uncle  has  suggested — offer 
you  our  forgiveness." 

"  Thank  you,  aunt ;  thank  you,  Mr.  Hamley,"  said  Patrick 
lifting  her  eyes. 


350  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

She  did  not  smile.  She  took  their  grace  with  a  certain 
serious  simplicity  that  was  grand  in  its  own  way.  Even  at 
this  moment,  when  she  should  have  been  penetrated  with  the 
sinner's  contrite  gratitude,  she  bore  herself  as  an  innocent 
person,  and  expressed, neither  pleasure  nor  shame,  neither 
gratitude  nor  contriiion. 

"  I  confess,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  a  little  tartly,  "  that  I  am 
mainly  induced  to  do  this  through  a  matter  that  has  occurred 
to-day." 

Patricia  gave  a  quick  glance  at  Dora.  Had  the  truth  come 
out  1  No  ;  dear  Dora  was  bending  over  her  modern  point  with 
her  usual  placid  amiability.  Whatever  it  was  that  had  hap- 
pened, it  surely  had  not  touched  her ;  and  Patricia,  checking  a 
sigh,  turned  back  to  gaze  at  her  aunt  again. 

"  Lord  Merrian  has  been  here,"  said  Aunt  Hamley ;  and 
then  she  stopped  and  watched  her  niece. 

"  Yes  aunt,"  said  Patricia  unconcernedly. 

She  liked  Lord  Merrian  very  well,  but  she  was  too  far  down 
in  the  depths  at  this  moment  to  be  lifted  out  of  them  by  the 
simple  intimation  of  his  having  called. 

"  And  he  has  done  you  the  honour,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley 
slowly,  "  of  demanding  your  hand  from  me." 

"  Demanding  my  hand  1 "  repeated  Patricia,  who  at  the  first 
moment  did  not  catch,  the  drift  01  the  phrase.  "  Does  that 
mean,"  she  then  said  suddenly,  "that  he  wants  to  marry 
mel" 

Mrs.  Hamley  was  a  little  disconcerted  at  this  abrupt  method 
of  inquiry  ;  but  Mr.  Hamley,  disposed  to  see  in  a  favourable 
light  all  pertaining  to  the  young  person  by  whom  he  was  to  be 
related  to  the  family  of  the  Dovedales,  rubbed  his  hands  and 
tkought  this  simplicity  delicious.  It  was  so  like  Patricia  ;  and 
»o  far  better  than  humbugging  about  the  bush  to  go  straight 
ahead  and  hit  the  right  nail  home  t 

"  Yes,  it  means  that  Lord  Merrian  wishes  to  marry  you,*1 
said  Mr«.  Hamley  firmly. 

"  But  I  do  not  wish  to  marry  him,"  said  Patricia  quite 
quietly.  "  I  like  Lord  Merrian  very  much  indeed,  but  I  do 
not  want  to  marry  him." 

Mrs.  Hamley  raised  herself  up  in  her  chair  and  looked  at  her 
niece.  She  looked  at  her  curiously,  as  if  she  was  something 


THE  OFFER  OF  FORGIVENESS.  351 

odd  and  wild  and  strange;  and  also  as  if  she  doubted  her 
senses  somehow.  Mr.  Haraley's  jocund  sinile  .became  a  trifle 
fixed  and  ghastly ;  and  Dora  laid  aside  her  work,  and  looked 
at  Mrs.  Hamley  with  sympathetic  astonishment. 

"  You  do  not  want  to  marry  Lord  Merrian  1 "  slowly  repeated 
Mrs.  Hamley. 

"No aunt,"  said  Patricia. 

By  the  faces  before  her  she  saw  that  she  had  again  committed 
one  of  her  usual  sins  ;  but,  though  she  was  sorry,  this  was  a 
matter  in  which  she  must  rouse  herself  and  be  firm.  Like  the 
forged  cheque,  it  was  an  affair  of  life  and  death,  and  involved 
her  loyalty  to  others  as  well  as  her  truth  to  herself. 

"  Not  want  to  marry  Lord  Merrian  t "  repeated  Mr.  Hamley 
after  his  wife. 

"  No,"  said  Patricia  in  a  low  voice,  but  distinctly. 

"And  why  this  extraordinary  disinclination,  may  I  askl" 
said  Mrs.  Hamley  with  a  polite  smile. 

"  Because  I  do  not  love  him,  I  suppose,"  replied  Patricia 
colouring.  "  I  like  him  very  much,  very  much  indeed  ;  but  I 
do  not  love  him  so  as  to  wish  to  marry  him — and,"  turning 
pale,  "  I  do  love  Gordon." 

"  This  is  the  second  time  I  have  heard  that  person's  name," 
said  Mrs.  Hamley,  still  speaking  with  that  dangerous  smooth- 
ness, that  deadly  politeness  which  to  those  who  knew  her  best 
was  the  most  formidable  weapon  of  her  rather  large  armoury. 
"  May  I  be  permitted  to  know  who  this  Mr.  Gordon  is  1 " 

"  Gordon  Frere,"  answered  Patricia. 

"  And  who  and  what  is  Mr.  Gordon  Frere,  pray  t  " 

"  Third  lieutenant  on  board  the  Arrow,'1  answered  Patricia. 

The  name  and  style  were  as  proud  to  her  mind  as  those  of 
Viscount  Merrian,  son  of  the  Earl  of  Dovedale  at  the  Quest. 

"  And  are  you  engaged  to  this  very  promising  young  gentle- 
man, this  third  lieutenant  on  board  the  Arrow  /  M  Asked  Mrs. 
Hamley. 

"  Yes,  aunt.  Dear  uncle,  the  last  night,  just  before  he  died, 
engaged  us.  But  we  were  always  fond  of  each  other — ever 
since  I  can  remember,"  she  added. 

"  Now  Patricia,  this  childish  folly  must  come  to  an  end,"  said 
Aunt  Hamley,  suddenly  changing  her  tone  to  one  of  severe  de- 
termination. "  I  am  your  guardian  and  I  absolutely  refuse 


352  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

my  consent.  I  forbid  the  whole  thing.  You  are  not  engaged 
to  Gordon  Frere.  Do  you  understand  1  I  have  forbidden  it ; 
and  I  have  the  legal  as  well  as  the  moral  right  to  do  so.  You 
are  no  more  engaged  to  him  than  you  are  to — to  whom  shall  I 
say  ? — Mr.  Sydney  Lowe ;  and  I  command  you  to  accept  Lord 
Merrian." 

"  I  am  very  sorry,  aunt,  to  be  always  offending  you,"  said 
Patricia  humbly  but  firmly ;  "  but  it  is  not  my  fault  if  I  am. 
As  for  saying  I  arn  not  engaged  to  Gordon,  you  might  as  well 
say  that  I  am  not  alive.  While  I  am  alive  I  must  love  him, 
and  only  him ;  and  I  could  no  more  be  false  to  him,  and 
marry  Lord  Merrian,  than  I  could  betray  any  other  trust  or 
break  any  other  promise."  This  she  added  in  a  lower  voice. 

"  You  hear  her,  Mr.  Hamley  !  "  cried  the  poor  lady,  turning 
with  an  appealing  gesture  to  her  husband. 

"  I  hear  her  certainly,  and  I  see  her,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  ; 
"  and,  hang  me,  if  I  can  make  her  out.  Is  she  mad,  Lady  ? 
Have  you  anything  " — he  rapped  his  forehead — "  in  your  fam- 
ily?" 

"  Why  do  you  call  me  mad  ? "  said  Patricia  speaking  earnest- 
ly. "  Is  keeping  my  promise  being  mad  ]  Is  refusing  to  marry 
one  man  when  I  am  engaged  to  another  madness  1  I  think  I 
should  be  worse  than  mad  if  I  acted  differently — I  should  be 
bad." 

"  And  how  am  I  to  convey  this  insult  to  his  lordship  ?  " 
asked  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  How — with  what  face — can  I  tell  him 
that  a  ridiculous  little  school-girl  like  yourself  has  had  the  au- 
dacity to  refuse  such  a  hiagnificent  proposal  ? " 

"  Lord  Merrian  would  be  the  first  to  understand  me,  and  to 
say  that  I  was  right,"  said  Patricia  warmly.  "  Do  you  think 
that  he,  good  and  clever  and  noble-hearted  as  he  is,  would  want 
a  girl  to  marry  him  who  loved  another  man,  and  had  promised 
to  be  that  other  man's  wife  ?  " 

"  Why  need  you  tell  him  anything  ?  "  said  Mr.  Hamley. 
"  Take  my  advice,  my  dear  young  lady,"  he  went  on  with  his 
soothing  voice,  "  keep  your  own  counsel  and  we  will  help  you. 
Do  nothing  but  wipe  your  mouth  and  say,  '  I  will  my  lord,' 
and  so  bring  all  your  troubles,  and  ours  for  you,  to  a  happy 
conclusion." 

"  No,  Mr.  Hamley ;   you  mean  well,  but  I  cannot  do  that," 


THE  OFFER  OF  FORGIVENESS.  353 

said  Patricia.  "  If  I  ever  see  Lord  Mercian  I  shall  tell  him  the 
exact  truth  ;  and  I  know  that  he  will  not  blame  me." 

"  And  after  that  what  do  you  propose  to  yourself  1 "  asked 
Mrs.  Haraley  smoothly. 

Patricia  looked  at  her  aunt. 

"  I  do  not  know,"  she  said.  "  I  must  leave  that  to  you.  It 
you  like  I  will  leave  the  house,  or  I  will  live  as  you  are  making 
me  live  now,  or  I  can  go  back  to  Barsands — dear  oldBarsands  ! — 
and  live  there.  I  don't  care  what  becomes  ot  me,"  she  said 
with  a  heavy  sigh,  "  till  Gordon  comes  home.  And  then  " — a 
light  came  into  her  face  as  she  lifted  it  up  and  raised  her  eyes — 
"it  will  be  all  over,  and  I  shall  be  in  the  sunlight  again  !" 

"  Now  my  young  lady,  hear  me,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  rising, 
planting  his  legs  wide  apart,  and  with  his  thumbs  in  his  arm- 
holes  preparing  himself  for  an  address.  "  Whatever  happens 
things  cannot  continue  as  they  are  ;  they  are  too  cursedly  un- 
comfortable. I  don't  like  to  feel  that  Abbey  Holme  is  turned 
into  a  jail,  and  that  a  fine  young  woman  like  yourself  is  mewed 
up  in  her  bedroom  like  a  state  prisoner.  But  neither  can  I 
have  a  forger,  or  at  least  the  associate  of  a  forger,  set  at  loose 
as  one  may  say  in  my  establishment.  So  you  see  where  you 
are — in  a  cleft  stick,  unless  you  get  out  of  it  by  my  lord's  help. 
Marry  him,  and  you  shall  have  the  best  turn-out  that  has  evei 
been  seen  in  the  county,  and  I'll  give  you  as  handsome  a  fortune 
as  if  you  were  my  own  child.  There'll  be  something  left  for  a 
rainy  day  and  this  little  one  here,  after  that !  I  can't  say  fairer 
than  this.  But,  by  George  !  if  you  refuse  my  lord,  you  may  go 
hang  yourself !  I'll  not  turn  you  out  of  my  house — you  are 
my  wife's  niece  and  the  admiral's  grand-daughter  ;  but  you'll 
understand  that  you  stay  here  only  on  sufferance,  as  a  kind  of 
genteel  pauper,  a  stray  dog  fed  from  charity  on  scraps,  a  thing 
too  mean  and  paltry  to  be  kicked  out.  There,  I  have  said  my 
say,  and  I'll  not  say  I've  made  it  too  hard." 

"  Go  to  your  room  again,  Patricia,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  se- 
verely. "  Think  of  what  your  uncle  has  said.  He  is  master 
here  and  I  cannot  act  beyond  or  against  his  wishes.  Put  it 
clearly  before  you  :  Lord  Merrian  and  honour,  Lord  Merrian 
and  happiness,  or  this  immodest  infatuation— for  I  call  it  noth- 
ing else — and  disgrace.  As  Lady  Merrian  all  will  be  forgotten 
and  forgiven;  as  Patricia  Kemball,  with  this  infamous  young 
W 


354  "WHAT  WOULD  votr  DO,  LOVE?" 

man  in  the  distance,  you  are  the  companion  of  a  forger  and 
banished  from  my  heart  and  esteem  for  ever.  Now  go ;  think 
of  what  we  have  said,  and  pray  God  to  turn  your  stubborn 
heart,  and  soften  your  wilful  wicked  temper." 

"Dear  aunt,"  said  Patricia  rising,  "  I  am  sorry  to  distress 
you  so  much,  but  I  am  fixed  in  this.  If  you  kill  me  for  it  I 
cannot  say  to  Lord  Merrian  that  I  will  marry  him  ;  and  I 
would  rather  be  killed  than  prove  false  to  Gordon." 

"  Go  ;  leave  the  room  this  instant.  I  will  not  have  Dora's 
ears  polluted  with  such  immodesty ! "  cried  Aunt  Hamley 
angrily. 

And  Patricia  once  more  went  back  to  her  prison,  feeling  that 
surely  now  the  measure  of  her  sufferings  was  complete. 

"  Could  any  one  have  believed  it  !  "  cried  Mr.  Hamley  when 
she  had  closed  the  door  and  gone.  "  I  tell  you  Lady  she  is 
mad." 

"  No  more  mad  than  yourself  Mr.  Hamley,"  said  his  wife 
snappishly.  "  She  is  simply  wicked  and  wrong-headed.  But 
how  to  tell  Lord  Merrian  when  he  calls  to-morrow  I  do  not 
know  !  What  shall  I  say  ?  What  can  I  do  ?  "  She  rocked 
herself  backwards  and  forwards  in  her  chair  moaning. 

"  Do  not  see  him  at  all,  dear,"  said  Dora's  soft  voice.  "  Let 
Patricia  see  him  herself." 

She  did  not  often  make  a  suggestion,  -but  this  was  so  obvious 
she  could  not  refrain. 

"  True ;  that  is  it,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  You  are  right 
dear  ;  always  right !  Yes,  she  shall  have  it  to  do  herself  ;  but 
oh,  I  feel  that  I  could  just  lie  down  and  die  for  despair  !  " 

"Hard-mouthed  young  jade  !"  muttered  Mr.  Hamley.  "To 
refuse  Lord  Merrian  ! — positively  to  disdain  to  be  made  Coun- 
tess of  Dovedale  !  A  mad-house  is  the  only  place  for  her  ; 
and  if  I  had  my  will  she  should  go  there.  Maybe  she'd  find 
her  senses  then  !  To  decline  to  be  made  Countess  of  Dove- 
dale  !  Was  there  ever  such  a  maniac  1  And  all  for  a  third 
lieutenant  in  the  navy  I  Good  Lord,  the  world  is  turning 
upside  down  I n 


THE  AIR  CAS1LE.  «-"* 


CHAPTER  XXXIL 

THE  AIR  CASTLE. 

tHE  next  day  was  a  warm  and  tender  May-day  ;  a  day  full 
of  hope  and  sweet  presages  of  a  lovely  future  j  a  day  in 
joyous  accord  with  the  gladness  and  the  love  that  filled 
the  young  maa's  heart  as  he  rode  quickly  between  the  blooming 
hedge  rows,  and  thought  how  good  a  thing  it  was  to  live,  to 
love,  to  be  young,  and  to  be  loved.  No  shadow  of  mistrust 
dimmed  the  brilliant  sunshine  \  no  little  cloud  no  bigger  than  a 
man's  band  foretold  the  coming  storm.  As  he  rode  through 
the  lanes  humming  to  himself  snatches  of  FElisir  and  Cenerentola 
in  a  very  exuberance  of  joy,  handsome,  loving,  sure,  he  looked 
as  if  he  had  conquered  once  for  all  doubt  and  sorrow,  those  old 
enemies  of  man.  and  had  come  into  the  Eden  where  he  would 
be. 

The  birds  sang  greetings  from  the  trees  as  he  passed,  and  the 
skylark  overhead  poured  down  its  shower  of  melody  like  an 
epithalamium  to  his  honour ;  the  meadows,  bright  with  sun 
and  brilliant  with  flowers,  seemed  like  a  royal  carpet  for  his 
lover's  feet  ;  and  the  crimson  twigs  of  the  maple  and  the  haw- 
thorn looked  as  if  they  ran  with  blood  that  blushed  like  her 
fair  face.  There  was  no  loving  simile,  no  tender  conceit  that 
did  not  flow  like  music  through  Lord  Mercian's  brain  as  he  urged 
his  horse  onward,  while  his  thoughts  went  like  messengers 
before  him.  His  imagination  coloured  all  he  saw,  attuned  all 
he  heard ;  so  that  earth  and  heaven  seemed  to  have  come 
together  in  his  soul,  making  both  one  world  in  which  only  love 
and  happiness  existed  and  where  Patricia  Kemball  was  the 
queen. 

It  was  the  hour  and  the  man  ;  the  supreme  moment  which 
comes  to  us  all  when  we  have  conquered. 

So  he  rode  through  the  lanes  and  park  and  avenue,  always 
humming  his  snatches  of  song,  now  passionate  and  now 
jubilant,  till  lie  drew  bridle  at  the  door  of  Abbey  Holme.  And 
then  he  was  ushered  obsequiously  into  the  drawing-room. 


356  '   "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

It  was  untenanted.  Neither  Mrs.  Hamley  nor  Miss  Drum- 
mond  occupied  each  her  accustomed  place,  and  there  was  no 
Patricia  to  meet  him  with  her  glad  shame  and  bashful  love. 
It  chilled  him  to  see  himself  face  to  face  with  emptiness  in  the 
place  of  welcome.  His  nerves  were  so  highly  strung  they  vi- 
brated to  every  influence,  and  this  cold  unresponsive  room 
struck  the  first  note  of  discord. 

Presently  the  door  opened  and  she  came  in.  He  went 
hurriedly  forward  to  meet  her,  but  stopped  half-way,  and  his 
smile  and  the  sunlight  faded  out  of  his  lace.  There  was  some- 
thing about  her  he  could  not  fathom.  True,  he  had  heard  she 
was  ill,  and  she  looked  what  he  had  heard  ;  but  there  was  mor& 
than  this.  There  was  a  depth  of  sorrow,  of  strangeness  even 
in  her  face  and  manner,  that  seemed  like  the  beginning  of  a 
tragedy,  the  announcement  of  a  mystery.  The  strangeness  waa 
due  partly  to  the  long  duration  of  her  home  arrest ;  so  that 
leaving  her  room,  and  being  free  to  walk  across  the  hall  and 
through  the  passages,  had  almost  a  bewildering  effect  on  her, 
making  her  scarcely  know  where  she  was  and  whether  in  her 
old  circumstance  of  union  with  the  family  or  in  her  new  con- 
dition of  isolation.  Moreover,  she  was  sorry  for  what  she  had 
to  say. 

It  was  no  blushing  bride,  yearning  if  trembling,  who  came 
up  to  her  expectant  lover  prepared  to  accept  as  much  blessed- 
ness as  she  bestowed  ;  no  happy  maiden  rejoicing  in  her  love 
and  glad  that  the  term  of  doubt  was  past,  it  lull  of  sweetest 
tremors  at  the  unknown  certainty  for  which  it  was  exchanged  ; 
but  a  pale,  sad  girl  in  some  deep  trouble  come  to  give  the  death 
blow  to  his  hopes  and  his  joy.  No  ;  it  was  no  bride  who  came 
up  to  him  as  he  stood  shocked  and  chilled  midway  between  the 
table  and  the  door,  with  one  hand  grasping  nervously  the  back 
of  a  chair,  the  other  half  held  out  and  half  withdrawn. 

At  the  first  glance  of  her  large  eyes  raised  to  him  with  such 
steadfast  mournfulness,  Lord  Merrian  read  his  answer  before  he 
made  his  request.  He  knew  his  doom,  though  he  would  not 
acknowledge  it  to  himself  ;  but  went  through  the  formula  pre- 
scribed, and  tempted  Providence  in  the  old  wild  way. 

He  spoke  to  her  ;  but  how  differently  from  the  manner  in 
which  he  had  anticipated  as  he  rode  along  the  lanes  and 
pictured  her  shy  face  with  its  unspoken  confession,  which  would 


THE  AIR  CASTLE.  357 

make  his  words  so  few  but  so  eloquent !  Now  lie  had  some- 
thing of  the  feeling  with  which  a  man  leads  a  forlorn  hope — 
a  feeling  of  desperate  determination  and  more  resolve  than 
belief — when  he  told  her  how  much  he  loved  her,  and  how 
ardently  he  desired  that  she  should  be  his  wife. 

She  listened  to  him  with  downcast  air,  tender,  sorrowful,  but 
not  responsive.  And  when  he  had  finished  and  had  asked  her 
for  the  one  word  which  would  be  the  confirmation  of  his 
flickering  hope,  she  put  her  hand  into  his  with  a  frank  kind- 
ness that  was  not  love,  and  said,  looking  into  his  face  : 

"  Dear  Lord  Merriau,  I  am  very,  very  sorry,  but  I  cannot 
marry  you." 

It  had  taken  Lord  Merrian  some  little  time  and  thought  to 
be  quite  sure  he  loved  Patricia  Kemball  well  enough  to  wish 
to  make  her  his  wife.  He  had  many  doubts  and  a  severe 
struggle,  not  only  with  his  parents  but  also  with  the  more  con- 
ventional part  of  himself ;  but  now  he  felt  as  if  he  had  deter- 
mined on  this  from  the  first,  that  she  had  known  it  from  the 
first,  that  she  had  encouraged  him,  and  that  consequently  her 
refusal  was  cruel  and  undeserved.  And  he  felt  too,  that  he 
must  break  down  that  refusal  at  any  cost.  The  prize  he  had 
doubted  whether  he  should  or  should  not  reach  out  his  hand 
to  take  when  it  stood  as  he  thought  within  his  reach — now 
that  it  was  denied  suddenly  became  the  one  thing  in  his  world 
which  he  would  devote  his  life  to  gain.  It  is  the  way  with 
men  in  almost  all  things  ;  but  chiefly  their  way  with  women, 
as  the  wiser  among  these  last  know,  and  act  on. 

"  I  cannot  take  that  answer,"  he  pleaded ;  "  I  will  not  be- 
lieve that  you  mean  it." 

His  handsome  face  looked  with  a  heart-broken  kind  of 
appeal  into  hers,  and  her  own  heart  ached  to  see  it.  But  what 
could  she  do  ?  There  could  be  no  paltering  with  trtfth,  no 
irresolution.  She  was  going  to  make  him  as  unhappy  as  she 
herself  was.  She  was  sorry  ;  heaven  knew  how  sorry !  but  she 
could  not  help  it.  She  must  be  firm,  for  his  own  sake  as  well 
as  tor  Gordon's. 

For  a  moment  she  did  not  speak ;  and  then  Lord  Merrian 
poured  out  on  her  a  flood  of  passionate  beseeching  and  more 
dangerous  pleading.  He  told  her  how,  if  she  married  him, 
ehe  would  help  him  to  be  his  best  self;  how  she  would  bring 


358  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO.  LOVE?" 

out  all  his  highest  nature ;-  how  she  would  strengthen  his  hands 
for  good,  and  give  meaning  and  life  to  his  resolves.  With  her 
by  his  side  he  would  live  as  a  man  with  an  ideal  should  live  ; 
and  the  world  would  be  all  the  richer  and  cleaner  for  the 
example  their  lives  would  afford  it — an  example  rooted  in  her 
and  her  only — due  to  her  and  her  only.  He  besought  her  to 
reflect  on  the  power  of  good  which  she  was  putting  from  her ; 
she,  whose  enthusiasm  was  for  good  ;  whose  heart  went  out  to 
humanity,  and  whose  whole  soul  was  tilled  with  the  desire  to 
make  men  happier  and  better.  Married  to  her  he  would  devote 
himself  to  the  sacred  cause  of  humanity  and  progress  :  without 
her  he  would  be  wrecked — a  purposeless  drifting  wreck  of  all 
that  makes  man  noblest.  Had  this  no  compelling  influence 
with  her  ? 

He  said  all  this  and  more ;  with  scarcely  conscious  craft 
taking  the  line  of  argument  that  he  thought  would  have  most 
weight  with  her ;  lover-like  wanting  her  on  any  terms  so  that 
he  might  but  have  her,  and  trusting  to  himself  to  make  those 
'terms  all  that  would  best  content  him  in  the  future. 

His  words  for  a  moment  dazzled  her.  To  be  of  this  great 
value  in  life  seemed  to  her  such  an  infinite  good  !  It  would  be 
bought  by  her  personal  sacrifice ;  she  neither  desired  to  be 
Lord  Merrian's  wife  nor  the  possessor  of  a  title.  She  loved 
Gordon,  and  she  was  a  democrat  by  nature  who  could  never  be 
at  home  among  the  aristocracy;  but  to  do  good — to  be  the 
motive  force  which  impelled  a  man  of  Lord  Merrian's  future 
place  and  influence  to  turn  his  energies  into  the  right  direction 
— it  was  a  temptation  just  tor  a  moment,  the  sophistries  natural 
to  enthusiastic  youth  coming  into  her  mind  like  voices  bidding 
her  to  accept  this  offer  as  her  sacrifice  of  self  carried  to  the 
gain  of  the  world. 

And  then  she  thought  of  Gordon ;  of  that  last  day,  and  their 
long  life-love  ;  and  she  felt  that  to  hold  fast  by  simple  integrity 
was  better  than  to  be  led  away  by  any  false  reasoning  on  the 
value  of  sacrifice  or  the  greater  gain  of  complex  virtues. 

Looking  once  more  into  her  friend's  face,  she  said  :  "  I  can- 
not indeed,  dear  Lord  Merrian  !  How  can  I  when  I  am 
engaged  1 " 

There  is  no  circumstance  in  life  in  which  a  man  shows  of 
what  stuff  he  is  made  so  much  as  when  he  is  in  love ;  none 


THE  AIR  CASTLE.  859 

wherein  the  difference  between  a  gentleman  and  a  boor  is  more 
distinctly  proved.  That  chivalrous  obedience  to  his  lady's 
will,  however  painful  to  himself,  which  marks  the  gentleman,  is 
just  the  quality  wanting  in  the  boor.  The  one  waits  on  her 
desire,  the  other  enforces  his  own ;  the  one  sues,  as  for  a  grace 
granted  by  crowned  weakness,  what  the  other  compels  by  the 
force  of  brute  strength..  Patricia  had  judged  her  friend  rightly. 
•  He  loved  her ;  more  than  ever  at  this  moment  when  he  felt 
that  with  her  was  gone  all  the  light  of  his  life,  all  the  hope  and 
glory  of  his  youth;  but  he  would  have  scorned'to  have  pressed 
now  for  what  she  so  courageously  denied.  He  was  a  gentle- 
man :  and  he  respected  the  rights  of  his  rival.  Perhaps  too  a 
feeling  of  wounded  pride  helped  to  stiffen  his  shoulders  to  bear 
their  burden  with  the  quiet  dignity  of  a  true  man.  He,  Lord 
Merrian,  knowing  his  full  value,  knew  that  socially  he  was  far 
ahead  of  a  nameless  third  lieutenant  in  the  navy  without  family 
or  money.  Man  for  man  too  he  did  not  fear  any  comparison 
that  could  be  made  between  him  and  any  one  else.  He  knew 
how  he  stood  there  ;  with  what  good  gifts  nature  had  endowed 
him  when  she  sent  him  into  the  world  a  nineteenth-century 
Antinous  ;  so  that  even  on  this  lower  personal  ground  he  was 
aware  that  he  stood  too  high  for  any  possible  humiliation. 

"  I  have  no  more  to  say,"  he  said  after  a  long  pause,  during 
which  he  had  stood  holding  her  hand  in  his ;  "  you  have  been 
frank  and  true,  like  yourself.  I  cannot,  even  for  my  own 
happiness,  urge  you  to  act  against  your  feelings  or  your  prin- 
ciples. If  it  was  only  a  case  of  waiting  I  would  wait  for  you 
as  long  as  Jacob  waited  for  Kachel ! — I  would  wait  years  on 
years  till  you  took  pity  on  me  and  said  come  1  Is  there  no 
hope  of  this  ? " 

He  bent  down  and  looked  into  her  face. 

She  shook  her  head. 

"  While  Gordon  lives  I  could  love  no  one  else,"  she  answered 
simply  and  gravely";  "  and  if  he  died  I  think  I  should  die  too  ! 
He  is  all  that  is  left  to  me  now  of  my  only  real  life  ;  for  this 
life  is  not  mine,  and  not  real." 

"  You  seal  my  lips,"  said  Lord  Merrian  turning  away  ; "  and 
you  have  broken  my  heart !  " 

She  stood  up  by  him  and  laid  her  hands  on  his  arm. 

'*  No  !  no  ! "  she  said ;  "  you  will  find  some  one,of  your  own 


ggg  ""WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

class  who  will  be  better  fitted  for  you  than  I  am  :  and  we  shall 
always  be  friends.  Shall  we  not  1 — brother  and  sister  to- 
gether I " 

He  smiled  in  the  sorrowful  way  in  which  men  do  smile  when 
they  are  offered  this  pale  comfort  of  fraternity  where  they  had 
looked  for  the  warmth  of  a  life-long  love. 

"  Yes,"  he  said  in  a  broken  voice  ;  "  we  will  be  friends 
always." 

Her  hands  lay  heavily  on  his  arm.  He  unclasped  them 
gently  ;  kissed  them  as  if  he  was  standing  by  a  death-bed  and 
this  was  the  last  leave-taking  ;  and  then  murmuring  some  in- 
distinct words  that  sounded  something  between  a  farewell  and 
a  blessing,  he  left  the  room  hastily  ;  and  soon  after  Patricia 
heard  the  sound  of  his  horse's  feet  thundering  down  the 
drive. 

She  did  not  know  eractly  how  the  next  few  moments  passed. 
She  remembered  nothing  but  an  aching  at  her  heart  arid  a  sense 
of  confusion  in  her  brain.  She  scarcely  knew  where  she  was, 
nor  what  had  happened,  nor  what  was  to  come,  but  sat  with 
her  eyes  fixed  on  the  carpet,  not  thinking,  only  feeling. 

44  Have  you  seen  his  lordship  1 " 

It  was  Mr.  Hamley  who  said  this,  as  he  and  Mrs.  Hamley 
stood  before  her.  They  bad  come  into  the  room  in  the  noise- 
less way  characteristic  of  Abbey  Holme,  and  she  had  not  heard 
them  till  the  unctuous  voice  of  her  aunt's  husband  broke  the 
silence  and  her  reverie  together. 

She  looked  up  and  pushed  back  the  hair  from  her  forehead. 
She  had  a  bewildered  and  startled  expression  that  seemed  al- 
most to  justify  Mr.  Hamley's  supposition  of  latent  madness. 

"  What  did  you  say  1 "  she  asked,  looking  from  one  to  the 
other. 

"Have  you  seen  his  lordship — Lord  Merrian,"  repeated  Mr. 
Hamley,  pronouncing  the  words  very  distinctly  as  when  one 
speaks  to  a  foreigner  or  a  deaf  person,  a  child  or  an  idiot. 

"  Yes,"  said  Patricia  fetching  a  deep  breath. 

"  And  what  have  you  told  him  1 "  asked  her  aunt. 

In  spite  of  herself  the  poor  lady  trembled.  There  was  just 
a  glimmer  of  hope  left  alight. 

"  I  told  him  that  I  could  not  marry  him  because  I  was 
engaged,  and  loved  some  one  else,"  said  Patricia. 


THE  AIR  CASTLE.  361 

"And  lie  accepted  this  excuse  ?"  said  Mrs.  Hamley  in  that 
dangerously  smooth  voice  of  hers.  She  had  better  have  spoken 
roughly,  so  far  as  Patricia  was  concerned. 

"  He  thought  of  course  that  I  was  right,  and  went  away," 
Patricia  answered.  * "  We  are  friends,"  she  added  anxiously,  as 
if  to  reassure  them  ;  "  we  shall  always  be  friends." 

Husband  and  wife  looked  at  each  other.  Mr.  Hamley  beat 
l^e  devil's  tattoo  on  his  chest,  and  softly  whistled  a  few  notes 
of  the  "  Ten  Little  Niggers."  Mrs.  Hamley's  bitterness  of  dis- 
appointment exhaled  itself  in  a  few  angry  tears,  which  she 
concealed  in  the  best  way  she  could,  under  cover  of  a  sudden 
cold. 

"  Well  Patricia,"  then  began  Mrs.  Hamley,  "  you  are  so  far 
your  own  mistress  as  to  be  allowed  the  liberty  of  rejection.  I 
cannot  force  you  to  marry  Lord  Merrian,  or  any  one  else,  how 
much  so  ever  I  should  like  to  do  so,  foreseeing  your  future, 
and  judging  for  your  good.  But  if  you  choose  to  decline 
such  a  chance,  you  must.  All  I  can  say  is,  that  I  wash 
my  hands  of  you  now  and  for  ever.  I  do  not  know  what 
your  uncle's  designs  for  you  may  be.  He  is  a  kind  man, 
but  a  just  one  too  ;  whatever  he  proposes,  to  that  I  shall  assent. 
If  he  says  that  you  are  to  be  turned  out  into  the  streets  to 
starve,  you  must  go.  I  cannot  plead  for  you.  And  if  he  says 
that  you  are  to  live  here  as  you  are  living  now,  in  solitary  con- 
finement till  you  are  twenty-one,  you  must  do  it.  He  is  the 
master,  and  you  yourself  have  tied  my  hands." 

Mr.  Hamley  came  forward. 

"  I  said  last  night  if  I  remember  correctly,"  he  began  orator- 
ically,  "  that  I  would  neither  turn  you  out  of  my  house  nor 
prosecute  you  for  the  crime  which  you  have  been  guilty  of  as 
principal  or  accessory  ;  nor  yet  maintain  you  a^prisoner  in  your 
own  room.  You  are  my  wife's  niece,  the  grand-daughter  of  an 
admiral  and  a  K.C.B.,  and  though  about  the  biggest  fool  for  a 
young  lady  with  all  her  senses  that  I  have  ever  met  with,  still 
a  young  lady  as  I  feel  bound  by  family  circumstances  to  look 
after  so  far.  You  are  free  to  remain  here  as  long  as  you  like. 
I  do  not  grudge  you  your  diet ;  it  won't  break  me  ;  no  more 
will  an  occasional  new  gown  or  bonnet  when  absolutely  required; 
but,  like  your  aunt,  I  have  done  with  you.  I  take  no  more  in- 
terest in  you  I  don't  care  a  hang  what  you  do  or  what  be- 


362 


"WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


comes  of  you,  so  long  as  you  don't  disgrace  this  house.  You 
are  as  free  as  a  bird  for  me  ;  for  I  would  as  soon  give  myselt 
the  trouble  of  poking  after  the  sparrows  in  the  hedge,  and  see- 
ing what  they  were  a-doing  of  in  the  mornings,  as  give  myseli 
the  trouble  of  regarding  you.  You  are  wiped  off  the  slate — 
done  with.  And  now  you  know  where  you  are  ;  so  make  the 
most  of  what  is  left  you,  for  it's  precious  little  I  tell  you  ! " 

"  I  scarcely  understand  what  you  both  mean  or  how  I  am 
meant  to  live  here,"  said  Patricia,  looking  vaguely  from  face  to 
face  of  the  two  stern  judges  who  stood  before  her  and  con- 
demned her.  "  Do  you  ever  mean  to  speak  to  me,  aunt  ]  am  I 
a  prisoner  ?  or  what  1 " 

"  You  are  free,  Patricia,"  replied  Mrs.  Hamley.  "  What  you 
have  desired  you  now  possess.  You  will  live  with  us  apparently 
as  usual.  Mr.  Hamley  is  not  one  to  wish  our  private  affairs  to 
be  made  public  property,  nor  do  I  desire  to  create  a  scandal. 
The  world  shall  see  no  difference." 

"  Only  I  shall  know  it  1 "  she  asked. 

"  Only  you  shall  know  it,"  repeated  her  aunt  grimly.  "  You 
will  not  be  punished,  and  you  shall  have  enough  to  eat,  and  be 
occasionally  seen  out  with  us  to  keep  up  appearances.  But  you 
will  understand  that  all  my  love  for  you  has  gone,  all  my  care; 
and  that,  as  your  uncle  says,  you  are  as  free  as  a  bird  in  the  air 
because  of  no  more  consequence.  You  have  an  asylum  here, 
not  a  home.  You  will  soon  know  the  difference,  and  be  better 
able  to  estimate  the  worth  of  what,  in  your  wicked  folly,  you 
have  thrown  away." 

"  But  I  cannot  live  like  this ! "  cried  Patricia  a  little  wildly. 

Aunt  Hamley  smiled  and  spread  out  her  hands. 

"  It  has  been  your  own  doing  ! "  she  said. 

"  Aunt !  dear!  what  would  you  have  me  do? — marry  Lord 
Merrian  while  I  am  engaged  to  Gordon  ?  Could  you  counsel 
any  girl  to  so  base  a  thing !  "  she  cried,  with  something  of  her 
old  energetic  sense  of  right,  something  of  her  old  directness 
and  abhorrence  of  crooked  dealings  breaking  out  through  the 
maze  and  the  deadness,  the  strange  confusion  and  oppression 
of  her  present  state. 

"  We  will  not  go  over  the  old  ground  again,  if  you  please," 
said  Mrs.  Hamley  frostily.  "  We  discussed  that  last  night.  A 
theme  becomes  tiresome  when  continually  repeated." 


THE  AIR  CASTLE.  363 

Patricia  put  her  hand  up  to  her  head,  and  the  fire  burnt  itseli 
out  of  her  eyes  and  brain. 

"  I  seem  to  be  in  some  horrible  dream,"  she  said  wearily. 
"  My  whole  life  has  been  a  dream  since  that  night ! " 

She  sat  down  on  the  sofa  with  a  heavy  dazed  look,  but  neither 
Mr.  nor  Mrs.  Hamley  was  in  the  mood  for  pity.  Nothing  short 
of  the  absolute  agony  of  death  would  have  softened  them  at 
this  moment.  They  were  too  sorry  for  themselves  to  be  able  to 
be  sorry  for  her. 

"  If  you  are  not  well,  Patricia,  you  had  better  go  up-stairs," 
said  Mrs.  Hamley  coldly.  "  The  drawing-room  is  not  the  place 
for  a  girl's  hysterics." 

"Uncle !"  cried  Patricia  holding  out  her  hands  and  looking  up. 

It  was  to  the  dead  she  called  ;  but  Mr.  Hamley  took  it  to 
himself,  albeit  she  never  called  him  uncle,  and  always  made  an 
internal  protest  when.her  aunt  so  spoke  of  him. 

"  Poor  young  woman ;  we  must  not  drive  her  too  hard,  hey 
Lady  ?  "  he  said,  taking  both  her  burning  hands  in  his. 

He  was  a  man  with  his  soft  places  ;  women  found  them  out 
though  he  was  a  good  husband.  Pleased  vanity  and  a  pretty 
woman  together  found  those  places  very  soft. 

"  Come  come,  rouse  up  !  "  he  said,  patting  her  hands  ;  "  we 
can't  have  you  go  on  like  this,  you  know !  You  have  disap- 
pointed and  injured  us,  but  you  shan't  come  to  harm.  Look 
about  you  and  pull  yourself  together ;  this  kind  of  thing  won't 
do,  you  know.  Water,  Lady  !  get  some  water !  By  George, 
she  is  going  to  faint !  " 

"  Don't  make  a  fuss  with  her,  Mr.  Hamley,"  said  his  wife  ; 
"  it  is  the  worst  thing  in  the  world  for  hysterics.  Lay  her 
down  and  open  the  window.  She  is  just  a  little  overcome  ;  and 
no  wonder ;  but  there  is  not  much  the  matter  with  her.  Girls 
are  always  fainting  when  things  go  wrong  with  them." 

But  Patricia  did  not  faint,  or,  as  people  call  it,  "  go  off." 
She  was  only  benumbed  and  overwrought ;  and  after  a  few 
deep  sighs  and  bewildered  movements,  she  came  to  herself  again, 
and  painfully  staggered  to  her  feet. 

"  There  !  sit  where  you  are  till  you  are  fit  to  walk  straight 
instead  of  staggering  about  as  if  you  had  I  don't  know  what," 
said  Mrs.  Hamley  peevishly ;  "  and  here  are  my  salts.  How 
silly  you  are  to  go  on  like  this,  Patricia  ! " 

"  Now  you  know  a  little  of  what  we  feel,"  said  Mr.  Hamley 


og^  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

with  a  rather  hazy  idea  of  sequential  reasoning,  as  he  sat  down 
bv  her  on  the  sofa  and  fanned  her  with  his  wife's  large 
French  fan,  telling  her  all  the  while  how  wicked  she  had  been, 
and  how  bitterly  he  had  been  disappointed  in  her,  and  how  she 
had  cut  her  own  throat  and  no  one  could  help  her  now  the  deed 
was  done ;  [with  more  to  the  same  purpose  ;  Patricia  hearing 
his  voice  as  a  far  off  kind  of  mill  stream  which  sounded  but  did 
not  convey  much  meaning.  But  though  he  lectured  and  talked 
big  words — big  words  and  bad  grammar — he  did  not  speak  un- 
kindly. That  pathetic  cry  of  "  Uncle  "  had  touched  him ;  and 
he  was  disposed  to  regard  this  recalcitrant  sinner  with  some- 
thing like  human  kindness ;  which  to  him  seemed  extraordi- 
nary  generosity. 

For  the  matter  of  that,  however,  both  Mr.  and  Mrs  Hamley 
felt  that  they  were  wonderfully  generous  all  things  considered, 
and  that  they  were  doing  their  duty  with  heroic  magnanimity  to- 
wards one  in  no  way  worthy;  more  than  their  duty  indeed, 
and  far  beyond  what  could  possibly  have  been  expected  of  them. 
So  they  were,  judging  by  their  own  lights  and  from  their  own 
stand-point.  To  forgive  so  far  as  not  to  prosecute  her  for  a 
forgery  in  which  she  had  been  confessedly  an  accessory,  as  Mr. 
Ham  ley  said,  and  then  to  forgive,  so  far  as  not  to  banish  her 
from  the  house,  the  severest  social  disappointment  she  could 
have  inflicted  on  them — in  both  these  acts  they  were  generous  ; 
and  they  glowed  with  the  conscious  satisfaction  of  the  virtuous 
as  they  reflected  on  their  good  deeds. 

What  an  outsider  might  have  said  was  another  matter. 
Could  rough  old  mother  Jose,  or  even  prim  Miss  Pritchard  or 
any  one  of  the  simple  fisher-folk  who  had  known  Patricia  in  her 
Barsands  days  have  seen  her  now,  her  health  and  mind  breaking 
down  under  the  iron  despotism  of  her  aunt's  rule — that  unlov- 
ing, cold,  and  contradictoiy  rule  which  allowed  no  freedom,  no 
expansion,  no  power  of  growth  to  youth  or  character— what 
would  they  have  said  ?  Something  very  difierent  Irom  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Hamley's  concluding  talk  that  night,  when  he  threw  out 
as  a  fine  fly  to  which  she  was  expected  to  rise  ;  "  I  think,  Lady, 
no  one  after  to-day  can  say  I  ana  a  hard  man  or  an  unjust  one  ? " 
and  she  had  answered ;  "  No,  Mr.  Hamley,  you  have  been 
more  patient  than  I  dared  to  anticipate.  We  have  both  acted 
as  Christians,  I  hope ;  which  must  be  our  consolation  and 
support  1 " 


ADDED  TO  THE  ESTATE.  365 


CHAPTER  XXXIIL 

ADDED    TO    THE    ESTATE. 

EVER  had  life  been  so  prosperous  with  James  Garth. 
That  twelve  hundred  pounds  had  surely  carried  a  bles- 
sing with  it !  It  had  fructified  in  his  hands  so  that  it 
had  done  him  the  good  of  twice  its  amount,  and  had  mended 
the  grievous  rent  which  ill-luck  and  an  evil  inheritance  had 
made  in  his  affairs  as  if  the  stitches  would  never  give  way,  and 
all  was  as  good  as  new.  It  was  a  pleasure  to  see  him  with  his 
honest  face  beaming  with  satisfaction,  and  his  step  as  light  as 
his  heart,  when  he  set  out  on  his  day's  work  ;  and  how  he  held 
his  head  high  and  seemed  to  congratulate  himself  on  his  state 
as  one  that  could  not  be  bettere.d,  as  he  passed  from  field  to 
fence  and  from  yard  to  fold.  And  yet  how  sad  it  was  to  those 
who  knew  that  his  prosperity  had  no  more  root  than  a  cut 
flower  blooming  in  a  vase,  and  that  he  was  virtually  Mr.  Ham- 
ley's  serf,  held  on  during  the  great  man's  pleasure,  to  watch  his 
exultant  satisfaction  and  childlike  forgetfulness  that  nothing 
of  all  this  was  really  his  own  since  the  day  when  he  had  ac- 
cepted Simpson's  loan. 

Still  he  had  used  the  money  well ;  and  for  a  rootless  thing 
it  all  looked  clean  and  rigorous.  Not  a  penny  had  been 
wasted.  He  had  paid  up  all  his  creditors,  save  the  most  dan- 
gerous, the  man  who  had  consolidated  his  debts  into  this  one 
huge  millstone ;  replenished  his  small  farm  stock  which  had 
dwindled  into  a  mere  nothing,  worse  than  none  at  all ;  set  up 
his  children  in  boots  and  his  wife  in  crockery  and  house  gear  ; 
got  one  or  two  loads  of  "  strengthening  "  for  the  land,  and 
hired  labour  for  a  bit  of  fence  work  here  and  a  yard  or  two  of 
drainage  there.  Yes,  he  had  used  the  money  well,  and  had 
made  every  pound  of  it  pay.  But  he  had  used  it.  And  of  the 
loan  not  more  was  left  than  thirty  pounds  to  meet  the  first 
half  year's  interest.  But  be' calculated  on  a  tidy  little  sum  for 
the  small  croft  of  hay  that  would  be  ready  for  cutting  in  an- 
other three  weeks  or  so,  and  the  crops  looked  well  so  far. 


-gg  "  WEtA?  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?'' 

To  be  sure  every  now  and  then  flashes  of  an  odd  kind  of 
doubt  came  into  his  mind  ;  but  a  doubt  perfectly  unreasonable, 
and,  as  he  would  try  to  convince  himself,  ungrateful  as  well. 
But  he  could  not  quite  get  rid  of  it.  The  fact  was  he  had 
never  really  liked  Mr.  Simpson  ;  though  he  was  the  poor  man's 
lawyer  thereabouts  ;  a  man  who  took  up  land  and  legacy  cases, 
and  suits  for  lapsed  rights  on  speculation  and  the  terms  of  no 
gain  no  pay,  but  if  success  then  half  the  amount  fought  for  and 
obtained.  It  was  a  bold  way  of  doing  business  that  sometimes 
succeeded  when  the  law  of  the  case  was  too  strong  to  be  set 
aside  by  technicalities,  but  that  as  often  failed ;  the  longest 
purse  making  the  best  fight  of  it  in  the  law  courts  as  elsewhere, 
and,  whatever  may  be  said  about  justice  being  no  respecter  of 
persons,  the  peasant  rarely  getting  the  better  of  the  gentleman. 
In  spite  however  of  this  professional  class-philanthropy,  and  in 
spite  of  his  unconditional  loan  which  had  such  a  look  of  oft- 
handed  generosity  with  it,  Mr.  Simpson  was,  as  has  been  said, 
no  favourite  with  James  Garth  ;  and  he  looked  anxiously  to 
the  time  when  he  should  be«able  to  pay  off  his  debt  and  be  a 
free  man  once  more.  He  recognised  the  lawyer's  trust  and 
kindness  and  all  that,  he  said ;  but  he  preferred  to  be  his  own 
man  and  to  owe  nobody  anything. 

As  he  sat  in  the  kitchen  one  evening  painfully  making  cal- 
culations and  adding  up  sums  on  dirty  scraps  of  paper,  for 
head-work  was  not  much  in  James  Garth's  line,  he  made  it 
clear  to  himself  that,  with  such  and  such 'a  profit  on  the  hay 
and  the  barley  and  the  handful  of  wheat  in  the  angle,  the  patch 
of  roots,  the  calf,  and  the  litter  of  thirteen  born  that  very  day 
—as  fine  young  pigs  as  could  be  seen  in  a  day's  walk  ;  thirteen  ; 
not  one  missing  or  moiled,  and  of  which  Mrs.  Garth,  like  a 
true  farmer's  wife,  was  as  proud  as  if  they  had  been  her  own 
children  and  about  as  anxious  that  they  should  be  done  well 
by— with  all  this  in  hand,  he  made  it  clear  to  himself  that  he 
should  be  able  to  pay  off"  so  much  of  the  loan  by  the  back-end 
of  the  year.  It  was  a  fair-looking  calculation,  as  comforting  as 
Alnaschar's,  and  as  real.  For  though  the  figures  stood  well, 

nd  proved  like  a  sum-book,  yet  granting  them  true  as  they 
tood,  at  the  best  nothing  had  been  allowed  for  a  bad  season 
*and  spoilt  crops,  and  the  margin,  say  for  sickness  or  extra  ex- 
penditure of  aay  kind  not  tabulated,  was  merely  x,  no  more. 


367 

It  was  just  the  kind  of  bright-looking  bubble  which  hope  and  a 
sanguine  temperament  fashion  between  them,  the  momentary 
will  o'  the  wisp  which  fortune  in  her  crueller  moods  flings  out 
to  mislead  men  before  she  destroys  them. 

This  was  emphatically  true  of  James  Garth  and  his  prosperous 
future ;  for  while  he  was  sitting  at  home,  putting  down  his 
rows  of  exact  but  obedient  figures  and  beguiling  the  evening 
with  pleasant  but  fallacious  Q.  E.  D'S.,  Mr.  Hamley's  last  words 
were  ringing  in  Mr.  Simpson's  ear  ;  "  Call  in  the  loan  at  once. 
No  humbug,  no  delay.  Down  on  the  nail  it  went  and  down 
on  the  nail  it  must  come  back.  Send  up  a  man  to-night ; 
twenty-four  hours ;  not  a  minute  more ;  and  d'ye  hear  1  sharp's 
the  word." 

The  blow  fell  hard  and  heavy.  It  came  unexpectedly  and  it 
came  cruelly.  When  everything  looked  so  well,  everything 
promised  so  fair,  it  was  hard  to  have  the  whole  fabric  shattered 
for  a  rich  man's  greed — the  possibility  of  success  that  was  so 
probable  destroyed  for  a  stronger  man's  selfish  will !  Perhaps 
it  was  extrinsically  better  that  the  acres  owned  by  James 
Garth  should  be  taken  by  Mr.  Hamley  who  would  farm  them 
more  completely  than  that  other  could.  But  it  was  a  life's 
ruin  all  the  same  j  and  some  one  once  said  that  the  life  was 
more  than  meat  and  the  body  than  raiment.  But  these  are 
old-fashioned  words,  which  the  world  has  gone  a  long  way  past 
in  this  nineteenth  century  of  ours  ! 

Still,  economically  right  as  it  might  be,  the  thing  seemed  a 
pity  all  the  same.  Even  the  clerk  who  brought  the  notice  was 
sorry  for  the  errand  on  which  he  had  come.  The  place  looked 
so  clean  and  bright  as  he  came  in  out  of  the  soft  May  evening 
twilight !  There  were  such  pleasant  evidences  of  homely 
sufficiency  in  rack  and  shelf  and  dresser ;  in  the  cheerful  little 
handful  of  fire  crackling  on  the  hearth  for  the  boiling  of  the 
supper  pot  hanging  from  the  chimney  crook ;  in  the  tidy 
clothes  of  man  ami  wife,  and  the  contented  faces  of  both  as 
they  turned  their  eyes  to  the  door  when  it  opened  and  bade 
the  visitor  step  in  and  come  to  the  light  and  the  fire. 

The  man,  Simpson's  clerk,  was  the  son  of  a  peasant  himself. 
He  knew  the  signs,  and  he  felt  for  one  of  his  own  kind  ;  as 
was  but  natural.  Moreover  he  hated  Mr.  Hamley  whom  he 
feared,  and  had  no  more  love  for  Mr.  Simpson  whom  he  de»- 


368  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  ' 

pised.  He  would  rather  it  had  fallen  to  any  one  else,  he  said, 
to  do  this  thing ;  but  he  was  hired  for  Simpson's  work ;  and 
subordinates  cannot  afford  to  keep  either  feelings  or  a  con- 
science. The  great  food  question  is  king  over  all  others,  and 
poverty  makes  its  victims  of  soul  as  ruthlessly  as  Jaganath  of 
bodies. 

There  were  no  loud  words,  no  swearing,  no  exclamation  even 
when  James  Garth  opened  the  letter  and  read  the  notice.  He 
took  it  with  absolute  calmness.  It  might  have  been  a  mere  cir- 
cular telling  him  the  upset  market  price  of  beasts,  or  a  notice 
of  a  sale  to  be  held  to-morrow  in  Milltown,  for  the  quietness 
with  which  he  received  it.  He  only  flushed  a  fiery  red  for  a 
moment,  the  veins  in  his  neck  and  forehead  suddenly  starting 
like  cords ;  and  then  he  paled  to  a  dead  white  which  left  his 
face  like  that  of  a  corpse,  as  the  whole  thing  suddenly  revealed 
itself.  He  had  walked  straight  into  the  snare  that  had  been 
laid  for  him,  and  there  was  no  way  of  escape,  look  where  he 
would.  The  twelve  hundred  pounds  required  of  him  before 
twenty-four  hours  were  come  and  gone,  and  Mr.  Simpson  con- 
fessing that  the  money  was  not  his  own  but  Mr.  Hamley's,  and 
that  all  entreaties  for  time  would  be  just  so  much  labour  lost — 
why  the  thing  was  self-evident !  He  had  been  entrapped  ;  and 
Simpson  had  simply  been  Jabez  Hamley's  tool  and  decoy. 

It  was  neatly  done.  Cruelty  of  the  worst  kind  always  is 
neat.  Mr.  Hamley  had  never  done  anything  with  nicer  pre- 
cision or  more  heartless  inhumanity.  He  had  marked  his  game, 
covered  him,  and  now  had  him  safe ;  as  safe  as  if  Long  Field 
Farm  was  already  mapped  out  on  the  estate  plan  of  Abbey 
Holme,  and  the  old  title-deeds  of  the  Garths  locked  up  in  the 
fireproof  safe  let  into  the  walls  of  the  "  Growlery."  Yes,  it  was 
neatly  done.  No  one  could  have  shown  more  patience  in  stalk- 
ing his  prey,  thought  Mr.  Hamley  rubbing  his  hands  ;  and  now 
he.  had  the  reward  of  patience.  A  grand  quality  !  To  know 
when  to  hold  and  when  to  strike — is  not  half  the  meaning  of 
success  to  be  found  herein  ? 

t  While  he  thus  congratulated  himself  on  his  method  and  held 
himself  to  have  deserved  well  of  men  and  the  science  of  agri- 
culture, as  practised  in  the  country  round  about  Milltown, 
James  Garth  sat  in  the  house  which  was  substantially  no  longer 
his  own,  conning  that  text  which  had  been  assigned  to  him  out 


ADDED  TO  THE  ESTATE.  369 

of  the  popular  lesson  of  the  day — the  weaker  man  must  lose, 
and  Might  is  Right. 

"  It  is  not  only  that  I  want  the  land  for  personal  purposes — 
I  could  have  disappointed  myself  easy  enough  if  that  had  been 
all,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  to  Mr.  JBorrodaile,  getting  the  first  word 
with  the  rector,  knowing  there  would  be  more  tfords  than  one 
on  the  transaction  when  it  became  known,  axnd  anxious  to 
make  himself  appear  a  public  benefactor  in  his  private  dealings  ; 
"  though  I  don't  deny  it  will  fit  in  very  well  with  the  rest — no 
gentleman  likes  to  have  a  bit  here  and  a  bit  there  among  his 
own  that  ain't  his  own  ;  but  when  it  comes  to  n  bit  of  weed- 
ground,  as  this  Long  Field  is,  why  it's  a  disgrace  to  the  neigh- 
bourhood, and  a  nuisance  too,  to  every  gentleman  as  desires  to 
keep  his  land  in  good  condition.  Thistles  and  dandelions — 
that's  about  the  size  of  it.  And  who  wants  to  have  his  fields 
stocked  with  them,  I  should  like  to  know  ?  Not  for  as  many 
James  Garths ! " 

To  which  the  rector  said — no,  certainly  not ;  no  man  spends 
his  money  on  guano  and  top-dressing,  to  have  his  careless  neigh- 
bours ruin  his  labours ;  and  if  James  Garth  could  not  farm  the 
land  properly  it  had  better  pass  into  the  hands  of  one  who 
could  and  would. 

Unfortunately  it  happened  that  at  this  moment  both  Dr.  and 
Miss  Fletcher  were  from  home,  else  may  be  James,  knowing 
how  good  they  were-to  their  poorer  brothers,  might  have  gone 
down  to  them  with  his  row  of  figures  and  his  story.  But  they 
were  away  in  London  ;  and  time  was  too  short  for  letters  to 
pass  between.  Had  not  Mr.  Hamley  foreseen  all  this,  and  had 
he  not  waited  until  "  yon  hound  Fletcher  "  was  clear  off  the 
premises  for  a  few  days  ?  A  child  of  the  generation  as  he  was 
he  would  have  scorned  to  have- committed  the  blunder  of  leaving 
the  back  door  open.  No ;  he  had  James  safe  in  the  toils,  and 
in  Dr.  Fletcher's  absence  there  was  neither  man  nor  mouse  in 
Milltown*  who  could  gnaw  the  cords  asunder.  So  the  fiat  wmt 
forth,  and  Long  Field  Farm  was  sold  to  Mr.  Hamley,  standing 
crops,  house,  stock,  land ;  and  Garth  had  a  full  hundred  more 
than  if  any  other  man  had  bought  the  lot.  Mr.  Hamley 
wanted  to  have  it  said  that  he  had  done  the  thing  handsomely. 
And  he  did  it  handsomely  too,  according  to -his  code;  leaving 
the  dispossessed  farmer  with  a  clear  hundred  in  hand,  when  all 
X 


370  «  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

expenses  were  paid  and  the  whole  thing  ruled  straight  between 
them. 

Garth  was  strongly  urged  by  his  friends  to  go  abroad  with 
this  sum,  and  try  his  fortune  in  Australia  or  America.  He  let 
men  talk  ;  and  either  did  not  answer  at  all,  or,  when  their 
words  roused  him,  bade  them  shut  up  with  an  oath,  and  a 
savage  look  not  like  his  old  self.  But  then  he  was  not  like 
his  old  self  any  how.  He  might  have  been  another  person 
altogether.  The  James  Garth  m^n  had  known  these  five  and 
forty  years  and  more,  active,  industrious,  .hopeful,  cheerful,  had 
died  and  left  the  mere  shell  ad  his  representative.  He  did 
nothing,  would  do  nothing ;  and  while  food  was  set  before 
him,  and  he  had  a  place  where  he  could  creep  like  a  dog  to 
sleep  in  when  he  came  home,  he  neither  cared  nor  knew  what 
was  behind;  The  present  and  the  future  were  alike  swallowed 
up  in  the  vanished  past,  and  he  lived  only  iu  regret  and  remem- 
brance. 

His  sorrow  had  broken  him  down,  and  had  turned  him,  if 
not  to  absolute  madness,  yet  to  something  tkat  was  very  near 
it.  .People  looked  after  him  and  shook  their  heads  when  they 
njet  him  ;  and  little  children,  who  had  always  loved  him, 
shrank  from  him  in  fear.  Unshaven  and  neglected,  and  though 
his  clothes  were  whole  yet  leaving  on  you  the  impression  ot 
rags  and  sordid  misery,  he  wandered  about  the  Long  Field 
lanes,  never  speaking  even  to  his  oldest  friends  beyond  a 
hurried  good  day  ;  or  may  be  it  was  only,  a  sullen  nod  that  he 
flung  with  a  slouchiag  air  and  a  downcast,  side-long  glance. 
Never  resting,  never  working  ;  muttering  to  himself  ;  some- 
times to  be  heard  laughing  wildly  and  sometimes  with  his  face 
buried  in  his  crossed  arms  weeping  just  as  wildly  ;  or  standing 
by  one  of  the  Long  -Field  gates '  looking  with  burning  eyes 
and  blackened  lips  on  to  the  land  that  the  master  of  Abbey 
Holme  was  breaking  up  into  harmony  with  his  own — and  he  a 
trespasser  on  the  ground  where  he  and  his  forefathers  had  been 
owners ;  not  drinking,  but  having  so  much  the  look'  of  it  in  his 
unsteady  gait  and  confused  air  that  even  his  friends  held  he 
must  "  get  it  on  the  quiet,"  and  all  thought  he  was  never  better 
than  half  sober  at  the  best ;  this  was  how  lie  lived  and  looked 
from  the  hour  when  Simpson's  clerk  brought  up  that  notice, 
and  he  knew  that  he  had  been  tricked  and  sold. 


ADDED  TO   THE  ESTATE.  371 

But  there  was  nothing  bad  about  him,  poor  fellow  !  neither 
was  he  mad  ;  no  more  at  least  than  any  other  heart-broken 
creature  is  mad.  The  world  called  him  so  for  want  of  a  finer 
distinction,  and  it  answered  Mr.  Hamley's  purpose  to  set  the 
report  well  afloat.  It  prevented  too  much  sympathy  for  his 
victim.  We  do  not  feel  real  sympathy  for  mad  folks.  We  are 
theoretically  sorry  for  them  and  express  ourselves  shocked ;  and 
if  we  can  bring  it  out  clearly  why  they  have  gone  mad,  and 
make  a  well-rounded  domestic  history  of  cause  and  effect,  we 
are  satisfied.  All  the  same,  we  keep  away  from  them  ;  and  our 
precious  balms  would  be  of  the  kind  to  break  their  heads  if  we 
administered  them.  At  the  best  too,  we  think  it  deplorably 
weak  that  they  should  have  lost  their  wits  for  sorrow.  When 
half  Milltown  said  James  Garth  had  gone  out  of  his  mind 
because  he  had  lost  his  land,  the  other  half,  which  listened, 
thought  that  he  was  showing  a  contumacious  and  undisciplined 
spirit  which  deserved  less  pity  than  reprobation.  Man  is  born 
to  sorrow,  and  he  should  take  his  inheritance  patiently.  Be- 
sides, it  must  be  so  very  unpleasant  for  poor  Mr.  Hamley,  they 
said.  He  had  put  money  on  the  estate,  and  of  course  he  had  a 
right  to  have  either  his  loan  or  his  land.  He  had  behaved 
nobly  to  the  poor  fellow  ;  and  see  what  an  improvement  it 
would  be  to  all  that  bit  of  the  road  when  the  farmhou§e  and 
its  pigsties  and  the  dirty  old  sheds  were  all  taken  down  and 
carted  away,  and  those  ill-kept  fields  in  as  good  order  as  a 
garden !  So  far  from  blaming  him  they  thought  he  had  done 
both  well  and  wisely  ;  and  they  were  only  sorry  for  him  that 
his  good  work  had  wrought  such  havoc  with  that  half-witted 
fellow.  For  he  could  never  have  been  worth  much  if  his  mind 
had  given  way  at  the  first  little  trial  like  this ;  and  it  was  not 
a  nice  thing  for  poor  Mr.  Hamley  to  feel  that  he  had  been  the 
cause  of  such  an  awful  upset. 

Mr.  Hamley  represented  society,  success,  and  the  law.  To 
a  law-abiding  people  legality  is  a  tremendous  backstay,  and 
sanity  and  success  are  so  much  more  pleasant  to  contemplate 
than  insanity  and  ruin  !  Besides,  take  it  how  you  will,  it  was 
better  for  the  world  at  large  that  Long  Field  should  be  owned 
by  a  capitalist  who  could  farm  it  up  to  its  capabilities,  rather 
than  bv  a  peasant  proprietor  who,  doing  the  best  by  it  he  could, 
grew  more  weeds  than  worts  and  took  less  off  thau  he  put  in. 


372 


"WHAT  WOULD  VOC7  DO,  LOVE?" 


All  this  good  economic  reasoning,  however,  did  not  mend 
matters  for  poor  James  Garth.  But  what  did  it  signify? 
Between  the  more  symmetrical  rounding  of  a  rich  man's  pro- 
perty, and  a  peasant's  holding  on  to  the  land  of  his  fathers, 
who  would  hesitate  which  is  the  better  thing  to  see  ?  And  if 
the  dispossessed  break  their  hearts  or  lose  their  heads  for  griet, 
they  but  confess  their  own  weakness  thereby.  The  stronger 
must  take  the  crown  of  the  causeway  as  his  right,  and  the 
weaker  must  go  to  the  wall  as  his  sorrow.  The  law  of  nature 
has  crystallised  this  fact  ever  since  the  first  wolf  eat  the  first 
lamb ;  and  there  are  those  who  deny  any  difference  between 
men  and  wolves — with  lambs. 

Mr.  Hamley  and  James  Garth  represented  the  righteous 
supremacy  of  strength,  and  the  inevitable  overthrow  of  weak- 
ness, and  only  a  few  washy  enthusiasts  on  the  one  hand,  and 
godless  democrats  on  the  other,  would  maunder  about  a  law  of 
duty  imperative  on  the  rich  and  strong,  or  uphold  the  doctrine 
of  rights  on  the  side  of  the  poor  and  weak  It  was  an  insigni- 
ficant little  transaction  save  to  the  persons  immediately  in- 
terested ;  but  it  was  a  type  ;  and  for  the  occasion  Long  Field 
Farm  was  as  a  microcosm  where  the  tremendous  facts  of  the 
universe  were  being  transacted  unhelped  or  unhindered  by  the 
love  or  good  conscience  of  men. 

The  Garths  had  moved  into  lodgings  in  Milltown.  This  of 
itself  was  a  change  of  no  mean  magnitude.  The  farmhouse 
freedom  and  rough  plenty  that  had  made  part  of  the  rule  of 
life  at  Long  Field,  the  ceaseless  activity,  the  interest  in  work 
never  ending  and  always  changing,  the  open-air  life  for  man 
and  boy  and  child  were  all  gone  now — exchanged  for  cramped 
lodgings  in  a  confined  back  street  smelling  of  stale  fish  and 
foul  sewers,  in  the  heart  of  a  town.  For  though  Milltown 
was  nothing  but  a  large-sized  village  to  those  accustomed  to 
metropolitan  centres,  it  was  like  a  metropolis,  a  closely-packed 
human  ant-hill,  for  these  poor  folks,  accustomed  as  they  had 
been  to  the  breezy  uplands  and  the  unconfined  air  of  moor  and 
meadow. 

Mrs.  Garth,  good  soul,  battled  with  all  these  untoward 
circumstances  bravely.  When  women  are  brave  they  make  a 
divine  fight  of  it,  and  when  men  give  way  the  collapse  is 
generally  complete.  The  wife,  however,  was  so  much  better  off 


ADDED  TO  THE  ESTATE.  373 

than  her  husband  in  that  she  had  her  children  to  think  of,  the 
place  to  keep  tidy  and  appearances  to  maintain.  Her  motheP* 
hood  and  housewifery  remained  the  same  now  as  at  the  farm, 
but  his  occupation  was  gone.  And  then  again,  though  she  had 
loved  the  place  well  it  had  never  been  to  her  all  that  it  was  to 
James.  She  was  a  woman  of  strong  instincts  and  keen  affec- 
tions as  well  as  of  sound  good  sense,  but  she  wanted  just  that 
dash  of  sentiment  which  had  expressed  itself  in  him  in  the 
pride  of  family  proprietorship.  If  he  would  have  put  his 
shoulder  to  the  wheel  and  have  gone  out  to  one  of  the  colonies* 
with  the  money  he  had  in  hand,  she  would  have  been  quite 
as  well  pleased,  had  they  prospered  and  the  children  kept 
their  health,  as  if  they  had  kept  Long  Field.  This  does  not 
say  that  she  did  not  grieve  for  the  loss  of  the  farm,  or  that  she 
failed  in  tenderness  or  sympathy,  only  that  she  had  more 
objects  of  interest  left  to  her  than  \\e  had,  and  less  sentiment 
to  make  her  suffer.  Still  she  did  make  the  best  fight  of  it 
incomparably ;  and  when  people  saw  the  difference  between 
them  they  said  she  was  doing  her  duty  like  a  Christian,  but  as 
for  James,  the  -wreck  he  had  made  was  disgraceful,  and  the 
way  he  let  things  go  by  the  board  a  shame. 

All  these  things  were  remembered  in  the  days  to  come 
when  a  motive  had  to  be  found  for  a  deed  that  thrilled  society 
at  Milltovvn  as  it  had  never  been  thrilled  before  ;  and  a  theory 
had  to  be  constructed  that  would  fit  the  facts  for  the  one  part 
and  hold  together  for  the  other.  It  was  then  found  how  much 
a  man  may  damage  himself  by  not  taking  his  inheritance  of 
sorrow  cheerfully,  and  what  evil  results  may  follow  on  not 
acknowledging  the  divinity  of  that  law  of  the  strongest  by 
which  the  weaker  is  destroyed. 


"WHAT  WOULD  VOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

THE  CLEFT  STICK. 

f~~  F  Mr.  Hamley  had  come  down  on  James  Garth,  he  was  so 
far  impartial  in  his  dealings  with  man  and  man  as  to  come 
'  down  on  Colonel  Lowe  as  well.  He  had  to  make  it  evi- 
dent to  Milltown  that  he,  Ledbury's  office-boy,  had  bought  up 
one  of  the  local  aristoi,  a  "  swell "  who  had  married  Lady  Anne 
Grahame's  daughter  ;  and  bought  him  up  as  easily  as  he  had 
covered  a  poor  paltry  peasant.  Besides,  he  had  that  need  of 
action  which  comes  after  a  disappointment;  as;d,  failing  mar- 
riage and  Lord  Merrian,  turned  to  Cragfoot  and  revenge.  So 
it  came  that  Colonel  Lowe,  being  far  behind-hand  with  his 
quarterly  interest,  received  a  notice  from  Mr.  Simpson — all  due 
legal  forms  being  complied  with — that  his  client  who  had  lent 
the  money  had  given  notice  to  foreclose.  Unless  then,  he  could 
find  some  one  else  to  take  up  the  mortgage,  his  bad  quarter  of 
an  hour  was  at  hand,  and  his  turn  at  the  Hamley  grindstone 
had  come  round. 

Six  months  wherein  to  settle  his  affairs — six  months  wherein 
to  find  another  capitalist  who  would  lend  sixty  thousand 
pounds  on  a  decaying  property,  with  the  quarterly  interest 
always  in  arrears  and  getting  yearly  more  difficult  to  find.  It 
was  a  bad  look-out  for  the  Colonel ;  but  to  do  him  justice  he 
faced  the  gloomy  prospect  manfully,  and  gave  way  to  no  weak- 
ness of  hopeful  gilding  by  which  folks  so  often  make  bad  ap- 
pear good  and  present  ruin  look  like  future  fortune.  He  only 
cursed  his  evil  stars,  and  that  fatal  luck  of  his  which  had  land- 
ed him  in  this  hole.  Had  any  of  the  thousand  and  one  fortu- 
nate probabilities  come  off  which  never  do  come  off  for  the  gain 
of  amateur  gamblers,  or  any  of  the  unfortunate  accidents  not 
happened  which  always  do  happen  to  overwhelm  those  who  are 
tempted  to  their  destruction  on  the  Turf,  the  Colonel  would 
have  stood  to  win  ever  so  many  hatfulls.  But  all  his  bets 
turned  the  wrong  way  ;  and  instead  of  bringing  himself  home, 


THE  CLEFT  STICK.  375 

as  he  had  hoped,  he  had  plunged  heavily — each  time  more 
heavily  than  the  last — losing  with  a  persistency  of  miscalcu- 
lation that  should  have  warned  him  had  he  been  of  the  kind 
to  accept  warnings,  and  that  as  it  was  looked  like  Nemesis. 
The  upshot  of  it  however  was,  that  he  stood  now  on  the  very 
verge  of  ruin,  with  only  one  chance  left — Sydney's  marriage 
with  Julia  Manley  and  her  hundred  thousand  pounds.  • 

If  the  boy  would  not  marry  her — and  he  had  not  made  a 
move  that  way — they  were  all  done  for ;  but  his  father  had 
not  kept  him  about  him  all  his  life  not  to  know  something  of  his 
nature;  not  to  know,  above  all,  that  poverty  was  just  the  thing 
Syd  would  not  accept,  let  what  would  be  the  means  by  which  he 
would  creep  out  of  the  net,  and  that  when  the  fix  came  he 
would  get  money  somehow,  by  any  act  of  treachery  or  dishon- 
our compatible  with  his  position  as  a  gentleman.  He  had  no 
fear  of  the  result  when  affairs  pressed  seriously  ;  and  the  day 
'after  he  received  the  notice  he  resolved  to  make  a  final  appeal 
to  his  son's  good  sense.and  right  feeling,  and  having  done  this 
to  abide  the  issue — of  which  he  had  no  doubt.  Once  convinced 
that  his  only  course,  as  a  man  and  a  gentleman,  was  to  marry  a 
woman  utterly  distasteful  to  him  in  every  sense  but  that  of  a 
convenient  banking  account^— and  the  thing  was  done.  To  be 
sure,  he  was  hard  to  convince  ;  but  then  he  was  young ;  and 
young  men  are  self-willed  at  times  and  the  elder  and  wiser 
must  have  patience. 

Colonel  Lowe  had  never  himself  shown  to  greater  advantage 
than  he  did  to-day,  when,  for  the  second  time,  he  went  thoroughly 
into  his  affairs  with  his  son,  and  placed  the  whole  condition  of 
things  clearly  before  him.  Nothing  could  exceed  the  delicacy 
with  which  he  stated  the  only  chance  of  escape  left  them,  unless 
it  was  his  manly  frankness,  his  paternal  tenderness.  Sydney 
was  selfish,  insolent,  ill-tempered,  weak — had  a  thousand  faults 
for  one  virtue;  but  he  did  really  love  his  father,  and  the  diffi- 
culties of  his  own  position  were  increased  by  the  desire  he  hon- 
estly had  to  help  the  Colonel,  and  set  him  free  from  his  em- 
barrassments. Had  he  not  been  Dora's  husband  he  would  have 
been  Julia  Manley  s  within  the  month  ;  but  what  could  he  do  ? 
H*  was  in  a  cleft  stick,  and  there  was  only  one  move  which 
ee  him.  And  that  one  move — would  Dora  consent  to 
Before  he  compromised  himself  here  he  must  be 


376 


WHAT  WOULD  VOU  DO,  LOVE?." 


sure  there.  He  believed  that  she  would  release  him ;  for  she 
loved  poverty  no  better  than  himself  ;  but  until  he  was  assured 
he  must  fence  off  a  promise,  and  fall  back  on  his  personal  re- 
luctance as  his  safest  card  to  play.  He  thought  he  could  com- 
pel her;  he  felt  convinced  he  could  when  he  had  once  made  up 
his  own  mind,  just  as  his  father  felt  convinced  about  himself ; 
but  between  love  and  doubt,  that  vacillating  mind  of  his  was  not 
made  up  as  yet,  but  was  tossed  like  a  football  now  by  his  affec- 
tion for  his  father,  now  by  his  hatred  of  poverty,  now  by 
love  for  Dora,  then  by  doubt  of  her  acquiescence,  and  then  by 
his  repugnance  to  the  alternative. 

"  I  loathe  the  woman  ! "  he  said  passionately.  "  Of  all  the 
women  I  know  Miss  Manley  is  the  most  detestable  in  my 
eyes." 

"  Poor  Julia  1 "  said  his  father.  "  She  is  no  beauty  I  con- 
fess ;  but  she  is  very  amiable,  and  she  has  a  hundred  thousand 
pounds  at  her  disposal." 

"  It  is  frightful,"  said  Sydney  covering  his  face.  "  But  I 
will  think  of  it.  I  can  say  no  more  if  I  can  I  will ;  but  the 
sacrifice  is  maddening  ! " 

"  I  only  ask  you  to  think  of  it,  my  dear  boy,"  replied  the 
Colonel  gently.  "I  am  so  sure  of  your  good  sense  that  I  have 
no  fear  of  your  decision  when  you  have  once  given  your  mind 
to  it.  I  do  not  think  that  you  could  bear  to  see  the  old  place 
sold  and  given  over  to  that  shoeblack,  as  it  will  be  if  we  can- 
not raise  the  money  somehow.  Nor  do  I 'think  you  will  like 
to  begin  life  on  your  own  account  as  a  clerk  in  some  office, 
with  not  as  many  shillings  a  week  as  you  have  been  accustomed 
to  have  pounds.  And  yet — I  see  no  other  chance  for  us." 

"Why  the  deuce  did  you  ever  go  on  the  Turf  ?  "  cried  Sydney 
with  a' sudden  outburst  of  insolence. 

His  father  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"Ah,  yes,"  he  answered  tranquilly.  "But  if  the  favourite 
had  won  ? " 

"  If ! "  cried  Sydney  ;  "  a  man  ruins  his  family  for  an  if !  " 

"  A  little  hard  but  smart,  my  boy,"  said  the  Colonel  quietly. 
"Of  what  consequence  a  few  ill-tempered  splutterings,"  he  re- 
flected philosophically,  "  if  you  can  carry  your  point  and  get 
the  main  thing  ruled  to  your  liking  ?  Syd  might  be  as  insolent 
aa  he  chose  poor  boy,  if  he  would  marry  Julia-  Mauley  at  the 


THE  CLEFT  STICK.  877 

end.  It  amused  him,  blew  off  the  steam,  and  hurt  no  one  else 
— just  the  play  of  the  fish  before  he  was  landed;  a  thing  for 
which  experienced  anglers  must  be  prepared."  Sull  the 
Colonel  did  not  like  his  insolence.  He  would  not  quarrel  with 
him  for  it,  because  it  is  impolitic  to  fall  out  with  your  tool ;  but 
he  would  stop  it.  So,  rising,  he  laid  his  hand  on  the  young 
man's  shoulder,  saying  kindly  in  his  very  best  manner — frank 
yet  dignified,  paternal  yet  friendly — 

"  Don.' t^  worry  yourself  now,  dear  boy  Time  is  valuable  of 
course,  but  we  are  not  going  to  be  sold  up  to-night.  Think  it 
over,  and  see  what  you  can  do.  If  you  feel  that  Julia,  poor 
soul,  is  really  impossible,  well — we  must  face  our  ruin  like 
men  and  gentlemen,  but  it  you  think  you  could  marry  her 
with  some  reasonable  prospect  of  happiness  after — and  you 
know  my  belief  on  the  subject — why  then  we  are  saved,  and 
old  Hamley's  trinmph  is  cut  from  under  him.  I  confess  I  shall 
be  sorry  if  you  decide  against  my  wishes  ;  but  if  it  is  for  your 
happiness  old  fellow,  I  shall  not  grudge  my  share  of  the  bill 
we  must  pay." 

"  Curse  Hamley  and  all  his  crew  !  "  cried  Sydney  savagely. 

"  Yes,  so  say  I  too ;  curse  Hamley  !  "  repeated  his  father. 
"  I  would  sit  here  and  swear  at  him  till  all  was  blue,  if  that 
would  do  any  good  ;  but  as  it  will  not,  we  might  as  well  save 
our  energies  for  useful' things." 

On  which  he  lighted  his  cigar  and  strolled  away,  very  sorry 
for  poor  Syd,  but  decidedly  of  opinion  that  the  best  thing  he 
could  do  was  to  get  out  of  his  presence  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
that  solitude  was  the  safest  condition  for  his  son  at  the  present 
moment. 

After  a  little  while  spent  in  useless  thinking  and  vain  regrets, 
Sydney  Lowe,  also  lighting  a  cigar,  strolled  away  as  his  father 
had  done  ;  and,  ordering  his  horse,  went  for  a  ride,  to  see  if  a 
hard  gallop  through  the  leafy  lanes  and  across  the  moor  would 
clear  his  brain  so  that  he  could  discover  how  to  make  two  and 
two  five,  and  in  what  manner  it  would  be  possible  to  put  back 
the  hand  of  time  and  cut  the  knot  that  could  not  be  untied. 
And  while  he  was  riding  he  found  himself  in  the  Long  Field 
lanes,  and  came  suddenly  upon  Jarnes  Garth  standing  with  his 
chin  resting  in  the  palms  of  his  hands,  staring  fixedly  across 
the  fields  where  Mr.  Hamley'e  men  were  working,  and  where 


878 


WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 


had  he  ventured  he  would  have  been'  warned  off  as  a  tres- 
passer. 

A  sudden  thought  seemed  to  strike  Sydney  as  he  passed  the 
man.  His  wild  and  haggard  face  put  a  vague  and  misty  idea 
that  had  been  passing  through  his  brain  into  tangible  shape. 
Here  was  a  man  who,  as  well  as  themselves,  had  wrongs  to 
revenge;  a  common  peasant,  therefore^,  creature  without  a 
conscience,  and  to  be  either  bought  or  impressed.  He  rode 
forward  for  a  short  distance,  then  turned  back  and  reined  up 
as  he  came  to  Garth  still  standing  where  and  as  he  had  left 
him,  his  elbows  on  the  gate  and  his  chin  resting  in  the  palms 
of  his  hands. 

"  Good-morning,  Garth,"  said  Sidney  briskly:  - 

The  man  looked  up  with  a  sidelong,  quick,  suspicious  glance 
that  had  become  habitual  to  him.  He  flung  the  young  fellow 
a  nod,  but  did  not  answer.  Nothing  disturbed  him  more  than 
to  be  spoken  to.  He  wanted  to  be  left  alone  in  the  world,  and 
to  have  no  interruption  to  his  mournful  broodings. 

"  That's  a  sad  sight,  Garth,"  said  Sidney,  pointing  with  his 
whip  to  the  fields.  "  I  don't  know  when  I  was  so  sorry  for 
anything  as  I  was  for  this  trouble  of  yours." 

"Eh?"  said  Garth. 

"  I  call  it  a  damned  shame,"  continued  Sydney  speaking  with 
energy  ;  "  a  cruel  scandalous  injustice." 

Garth  looked  up.  The  passionate  speech  and  accent  of  the 
gentleman  struck  him  as  odd.  It  was  kind  of  him  to  feel  so 
keenly  for  him,  a  poor  man  ;  but  what  call  had  a  gentleman  to 
take  the  sorrows  of  a  horny-handed  working-man  to  heart  ?  It 
jarred  him  somehow  ;  and  yet  it  was  kind. 

"  He  laid  his  lines  and  he  took  it,"  said  Garth  slowly. 

"  Yes,  I  know  all  about  that ;  and  how  you  can  stand  there 
atid  see  it  all  I  can't  make  out,"  said  Sydney.  "  If  the  fellow 
had  done  as  much  by  me,  or  half  as  much,  I  would  have  broken 
his  head  before  now." 

Garth's  eye  blazed  out  with  sudden  passion  and  his  wan 
cheek  flamed.  He  clenched  his  right  hand  and  muttered  some- 
thing between  his  teeth.  Sydney  did  not  hear  the  words,  but 
the  look  and  the  action  were  significant  enough. 

"  That's  what  I  say,"  repeated  Colonel  Lowe's  son  in  a  lower 
yoice,  and  with  a  vicious  kind  of  distinctness  in  his  words.  "  If 


THE  CLEFT  STICK.  379 

he  had  done  as  much  by  me,  or  half  as  much,  I  -would  have 
broken  the  fellow's  head ;  and  broken  it  so  that  it  would  not 
have  been  mended  again  in  a  hurry." 

"  It  would  be  a  good  job  done,"  said  Garth  as  if  to  himself. 

"  A  very  good  job  !  "  said  Sydney.  "  The  fellow  is  the  pest 
of  the  neighbourhood  ;  a  low-lived  cur !  He  has  neither  the 
manners  nor  the  feelings  of  a  gentleman.  If  he  got  knocked 
on  the  head  some  dark  night  there  is  not  a  soul  in  the  place 
but  would  feel  that  a  nuisance  had  been  got  rid  of,  and  would 
be  right  thankful  to  the  hand  that  had  done  it." 

"  A  rich  man  and  few  friends,"  Garth  muttered. 

He  still  spoke  as  if  to  himself,  as  if  Sidney  Lowe  had  passed 
out  of  his  sphere  altogether. 

"  A  blackguard  without  one  friend,"  said  Sidney.  "  Why  ! 
how  did  he  treat  that  nice  girl  of  yours  ? — sent  her  off  at  a 
moment's  notice  because  his  wife  had  lost  a  pound  or  two ! 
He  did  not  dare  to  say  why,  but  I  -happen  to  know  that  was 
the  reason.  What  can  you  say  of  a  man  like  that  1 " 

James  Garth  made  no  reply ;  his  face  was  still  turned  to  the 
fields,  his  hand  strongly  clenched,  his  lips  set,  his  eyes  fixed  and  . 
burning.  A  vision  passed  before  him.  He  saw  his  enemy,  the 
man  who  had  tricked  and  sold  him,  walking  before  him  in  the 
evening  darkness.  He  noted  his  jaunty  stride,  his  chest  thrown 
forward,  his  shoulders  set  square,  his  head  well  up,  as  a  man 
who  had  conquered  fortune  and  beaten  all  round  in  the  game 
of  life.  He  saw  Jhimself  creeping  after  him  with  -a  stealthy 
step — a  shadow  dogging  him  as  revenge  dogs  crime  ;  he  saw 
the  distance  gradually  lessening,  he  gained  inch  by  inch  upon 
him ;  he  was  creeping  up  to  him,  always  in  the  shadow,  till  he 
was  close — close ;  and  now — 

There  was  a  cry  that  startled  Sydney  and  made  the  men  in 
the  fields  throw  down  their  picks  and  spades  and  come  hurry- 
ing to  the  gate. 

"  No !  no !  not  murder  !  Good  Lord !  not  murder !  "  shrieked 
James  Garth,  struggling  and  foaming.  He  had  had  an  epileptic 
fit  once  before  in  his  life ;  this  was  only  a  recurrence. 

"  Who  said  murder  1 "  asked  one  of  the  men  looking  darkly 
at  Sydney. 

"  And  what's  to  do  here,  sir  ? "  asked  another. 

"  I  do  not  know  what  it  all  means,"  Sydney  answered.    As 


380 


"WHAT  WOULD  YOU   DO,  LOVE?" 


he  spoke  his  face  changed,  and  his  eyes  had  the  look  of  aqnick 
thought  in  them.  "  That  poor  fellow,"  he  then  went  on  to  say 
with  an  air  of  charitable  disdain — he  was  a  gentleman  now, 
speaking  of  a  boor  to  his  fellow-boors — "that  poor  fellow  there 
seems  to  have  had  a  bad  kind -of  thought.  We  were  talking  oi 
Hamley,  and  he  said  how  infamously  he  had  been  used,  and 
then  suddenly  shouted  '  murder  ! '  I  hope  he  was  not  think- 
ing of  doing  for  Mr.  Hamley,"  with  a  slight  smile  that  had  a 
ghastly  look  in  it. 

"  That's  a  hard  word  to  say,  sir,"  said  one  of  the  men  sul- 
lenly. "  James  ain't  the  man  to  take  life." 

And  Sydney,  with  a  careless  "  Well,  I  hope  not;  but  murder 
has  an  ugly  sound  with  it,"  rode  away  revolving. 

That  night  he  and  Dora  had  an  unreal  kind  of  interview ; 
but  one  in  which  he  was  defeated.  Each  wore  a  mask,  and 
both  fenced  cleverly,  with  more  feints  than  threats ;  but  she 
was  the  stronger  of  the  two  and  spoilt  his  game.  He  told  her 
of  his  difficulties,  his  father's  ruin,  and  the  foreclosing  of  the 
mortgage  ;  she  sympathised  with  him  in  the  dearest  way,  and 
complained  of  her  own  perplexities  in  the  Hamley  resolve  to 
keep  her  as  a  kind  of  state  prisoner  at  Abbey  Holme  for  ever ; 
and  what  could  she  do  to  help  him  ?  Between  too  little  money 
and  too  much  love,  she  thought  life  very  hard  and  people  very 
queer,  she  said,  with  a  pretty  shrug  of  her  round  uncovered 
ihoulder — one  of  her  nice  little  tricks  that  Sydney  admired. 
He  asked  for  her  counsel  as  to  what  he  should  do,  as  she  could 
not  help  him ;  and  hinted  at  Miss  Manley  and  her  hundred 
thousand  pounds ;  but  she  was  too  wise  to  take  up  his  hint. 
She  was  determined  that  what  he  wanted  her  to  know  he  should 
say  in  plain  terms,  leaving  no  loophole  by  which  to  creep  out 
should  things  turn  ill.  Not  that  she  wanted  their  marriage  to 
continue,  as  things  were,  could  it  be  safely  broken.  She  would 
if  she  could  have  torn  her  marriage  lines  as  she  might  have 
torn  a  milliner's  bill  that  had  been  paid  and  done  with.  As 
she  could  not  do  that,  she  was  not  minded  that  Sydney  should 
have  any  advantage  she  could  not  share. 

She  was  so  full  of  innocence  and  high-mindedness  to-night 
no  man  could  possibly  have  proposed  to  her  a  crime  to  which 
she  must  give  her  assent — so  full  of  sweetness  and  love,  no  man 
could  have  told  her  he  meant  treachery  and  desertion.  He 


THE  CLEFT  STICK.  381 

«ras  foiled  at  every  turn.  She  would  not  understand  his  hints, 
and  he  could  not  quarrel  with  her.  How  can  any  one  quarrel 
with  a  sweet,  amiable,  lovely  little  girl  whose  every  accent  is  a 
caress,  every  word  an  endearment  ? — a  soft,  purring  creature, 
sympathetic  and  responsive,  and  offering  no  more  resistance 
than  a  ball  of  swansdown  1  The  thing  is  impossible  !  You 
might  as  well  try  to  play  fives  with  that  same  ball  of  swans- 
down  as  cross  swords  with  a  woman  of  Dora  Drummond's  type 
when  she  has  set  her  mind  to  yield  and  to  fascinate,  to  guide  by 
a  silken  thread — yet  to  hold  with  an  iron  hand. 

Ever  since  Sydney  had  made  her  take  that  roll  of  ten  sover- 
eigns Dora  had  begun  to  hate  him,  and  to  hate  him  all  the  more 
because  she  had  begun  to  fear  him.  She  did  not  know  what 
horror  he  might  not  force  her  to  commit,  if  his  necessities 
urged  ;  and  she  did  not  like  the  unhappiness  of  which  he  ha'd 
been  the  cause.  Soft,  sensual,  self-indulgent  women  never  do  like 
to  see  unhappiness ;  it  disturbs  and  annoys  them  ;  and  for  all  her 
capacities  for  cruelty  if  she  was  pushed  to  it,  Dora  was  essen- 
tially good-natured  when  it  did  not  cost  her  too  much.  Never- 
theless, though  she  hated  him  to-night,  she  held  him  and  she 
fascinated  him,  never  having  been  more  delightful,  more  en- 
dearing. Not  that  she  would  at  any  time  have  suffered  herself 
to  sink  into  the  ordinary  groove  of  English  wives — that  groove 
wherein  they  do  not  think  it  necessary  to  try  to  please  their 
husbands  ;  having  got,  not  caring  to  retain.  Had  she  detested 
the  man  who  owned  her  she  would  have'  made  herself  none  the 
less  pleasant  and  coquettish  to  him.  She  might  have  poisoned 
him,  and  probably  would,  but  she  would  have  been  careful  to 
have  handed  him  his  dose  of  quietness*with  the  prettiest  little 
smile  and  the  most  becoming  little  cap  in  the  world.  Ten  min- 
utes before  she  had  eloped  with  her  lover,  she  would  have  put 
her  arms  round  her  husband's  neck  and  have  called  him  a  dear, 
and  would  have  asked  him  if  her  dress  was  not  pretty,  and, 
smoothing  her  flounces,  just  'the  thing  for  a  journey  ?  Her 
creed  was,  that  if  disagreeable  things  had  to  be  done,  there 
was  not  the  smallest  reason  vhy  they  should  not  be  done  plea- 
santly ;  and  if  jalap  has  to  be  taken,  in  the  name  of  humanity 
smother  it  well  in  jam. 

Sydney  understood  nothing  of  all  this.  He  saw  her  as  she 
cfcose  he  should  see  Tier,  and  took  her  at  her  own  valuation. 


382  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

Had  things  gone  well  with  them,  he  would  never  have  seen 
her  other  than  as  the  sweetest  and  most  amiable  little  girl  the 
.world  had  ever  produced  ;  he  would  have  been  even  a  better 
man  through  the  soothing  influence  of  her  assumed  virtues,  just 
as  the  Hamleys  were  both  happier  and  better  through  that 
same  influence.  He  would  have  lived  and  died  and  have  never 
learnt  the  truth  to  the  last — not  when  he  kissed  her  hand  as 
she  gave  him  the  poisoned  .cup,  and  blessed  his  friend  for  whose 
sake  she  had  given  it.  These  women — soft,  fair,  and  false — 
have  ever  been  the  women  men  love  best.  They  have  their 
uses  ;  and  one  is  that  they  sometimes  avenge  their  honester 
sisters. 

When  they  were  about  to  part,  "Sydney  said  half-jokingly, 
half-seriously  $  "  AVhat  would  you  do  Dody,  if  I  was  forced  to 
marry  Julia  Manley  1 " 

"  Syd  ! "  she  answered,  her  cheek  on  his  shoulder.  "  As  I 
cannot  imagine  anything  so  dreadful,  I  cannot  say  what  I  would 
do." 

"  You  would  scarcely  give  me  in  custody  for  bigamy  ? "  he 
laughed. 

"  Why  not,  dear  ?  "  asked  Dora,  innocently. 

"  WThy  not  1  Because  you  would  not  like  to  be  the  wife  of 
a  felon,  in  the  first  place ;  nor  a  poor  little  lost  love,  turned  out 
of  house  and  home  and  having  to  work  for  your  living,  in  the 
second,"  he  answered. 

"  As  if  I  should  mind  wnat  became  of  myself  in  such  a 
horrible  position  as  that !  "  was  her  reply.  "  There  are  two 
things  for  which  all  women,  who  are  real  women,  would  sacrifice 
themselves,  Syd,"  she  went  on  to  say  with  her  pretty  professorial 
air;  "love  and  revenge.  I  have  gone  far  enough,  as  things 
are,  for  the  one  ;  I  don't  want  *to  find  out  by  experience  how 
far  I  could  or  would  go  for  the  other." 

"  Not  to  your  own  ruin,  though  perhaps  to  mine,"  he  said, 
smoothing  her  hair  caressingly.  *"  You  might  not  care  about 
me,  but  I  am  sure  you  would  about  yourself." 

"  I  think  I  would  sacrifice  myself  too,  if  I  wanted  to  punish 
you,"  she  said  in  the  sweetest  way. 

And  then  he  laughed  and  kissed  her,  and  said  she  was  a 
dear  little  transparent  darling,  and  good  fun  to  humbug— she 
believed  everything  he  said  to  her. 


THE  CLEFT  STICK.  383 

To  which  Dora,  smiling  and  showing  her  small  white  teeth, 
said — Why,  of  course  she  did  !  What  were  women  for  but  to 
believe  in  and  love  their  husbands  1  If— pouting — he  hum- 
bugged her,  that  was  very  wrong,,  and  very  wicked  of  him. 
She  never  humbugged  him,  and  she  thought  he  ought  to  be  as 
loyal  to  her. 

"  Well,  then,  I  will !  "  said^  Sydney.  "  So  I  may  not  marry 
Julia  Manley  1 " 

"  If  you  do  I  will  kill  you  and  your  Julia  Manley  too  !  "  said 
Dora  with  the  most  enchanting  assumption  of  viciousness. 

He  laughed  again,  and  pretended  to  be  afraid  of  her  ;  and 
then  he  vowed  he  would  be  a  good  boy,  and  so  on  ;  with  a 
dozen  varieties  of  falsehood  and  folly.  But  when  he  went 
away  he  wondered  to  himself  what  Dora  really  would  do  if  he 
were  to  marry  Julia  Manley  ;  as  he  must  — he  knew  that  well 
enough.  It  was  horrible,  detestable,  but  he  must !  She  could 
not  betray  him,  let  her  threaten  as  much  as  she  liked.  The 
same  reasons  which  had  kept  them"  both  from  confessing  their  f 
marriage  would  keep  her  quiet  when  it  was  broken  ;  and  for 
the  far-off  future — if  the  day  should  ever  come  when  she  should 
be  poor  and  he  rich;  a  not  very  likely  contingency, but  if  it  should 
come — why  then  he  must  trust  to  the  chapter  of  accidents,  arid 
hope  for  a  miracle  ;  as  weak  men  and  bad  men  do. 

But  what  a  dear  she  was  ! — his  fluid  thoughts  went  that  way 
now.  How  could  he  ever  grve  her  up  1  What  a  perplexing 
pass  he  was  in  !  What  could  he  do — how  could  he  save  him- 
self from  pain  and  annoyance  1  How  warmly  he  would  have 
welcomed  the  Mephistopheles  who  would  have  got  him  safely 
out  of  this  cleft  stick  in  which  he  was  held,  even  by  the  pay- 
ment of  that  shadowy  thing  he  called  his  soul !  And  this 
thought  brought  him  once  more  to  the  remembrance  of  James 
Garth  and  his  soul ;  and  what  a  blessed  solution  of  all  present 
difficulties  it  would  be,  could  that  half-mad  fellow  be  induced 
to  break  old  Hamley'a  head  one  of  these  dark  nights,  and  so 
end  the  coil  once  and  for  ever  !  What  would  become  of  him, 
the  murderer,  afterwards  was  a  thing  of  no  consequence.  He 
was  played  out  ;  and  whether  he  died  in  the  workhouse  or  a 
madhouse,  of  starvation  or  on  the  gallows,  his  life  was  done 
for  and  the  manner  of  the  end  signified  but  little.  How  could 
he  tempt  him?  he  thought ;  how  get  the  idea  into  his  poor 


334  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

feverish  head  ?  Probably  the  old  ruffian  had  left  Dora  well 
provided  for.  If  only  he  could  be  swept  out  of  existence  at  this 
juncture,  how  smooth  the  road  would  be  ! 

Meanwhile  Dora,  011  her  side,  resolved  never  again  to  meet  as 
of  old  Sydney  Lowe,  her  lawful  husband.  What  he  intended 
to  do,  she  thought,  let  him,  without  counsel  or  consent  from 
her.  If  she  wished  to  keep  him  in  her  power,  as  she  did,  he 
must  tie  his  own  nooses  and  slip  his  own  head  into  them  with- 
out help  or  hindrance  so  far  as  she  was  concerned.  Her  role 
was  innocence  coupled  with  devotion  ;  and  she  must  be  careful 
of  both  the  properties  and  business  belonging  to  her  part. 
This  was  her  resolve,  as  she  crept  back  into  the  house,  and 
locked  up  the  key  of  the  postern  gate  in  her  most  sacred 
drawer.  The  plot  was  thickening  unpleasantly  ;  and  she  was 
quite  acute  enough  to  know  that  her  safest  place  was  one  to 
the  side,  where  she  could  observe  bub  where  she  was  not 
included 


ABANDONED  TO  HERSELF.  3S5 


CHAPTER  XXXV. 

ABANDONED  TO  HERSELF. 

RS.  HAMLEY  was  not  a  woman  to  do'things  by  halves. 
What  she  said  she  generally  meant,  and  she  had  not 
that  kind  of  nature,  morally  severe  and  physically  ten- 
der, which  promises  hard  things  and  does  soft  ones.  On  the 
contrary,  if  her  words  were  severe  her  actions  ran  them  close  ; 
so  that  when  she  told  Patricia  she  was  cast  out  of  her  love  and 
abandoned  to  herself — given  her  freedom  on  the  one  hand,  but 
receiving  desolation  on  the  other — she  said  what  her  heart  dic- 
tated ;  and  she  acted  up  to  it. 

Patricia  was  in  very  truth  abandoned  to  herself.  She  was 
never  scolded,  never  thwarted,  never  denied,  because  absolute- 
ly ignored.  She  came  and  went,  and  no  notice  was  taken  of  her; 
no  one  asked  where  she  had  been  or  what  she  had  done.  She 
took  her  place  at  the  table,  and  the  servants  attended  on  her 
with  the  rest ;  but  she  was  not  included  in  the  inner  kingdom, 
and  if  she  made  an  observation,  which  was  not  often,  her  words 
fell  flat  and  without  response.  Had  she  absented  herself,  no 
one  would  have  asked  for  her  until  the  thing  had  begun  to 
look  serious ;  and  once  when  she  was  late  for  luncheon  and 
made  her  excuse  in  her  old  frank,  hurried  way,  her  aunt 
answered  coldly  :  "  Pray  do  not  give  yourself  the  trouble  to 
apologize.  It  really  does  not  signify  the  least  in  the  world 
whether  you  are  late  or  not." 

Abandoned  to  herself ;  cut  off  from  all  family  communion  ; 
denied  even  the  friendliness  of  rebuke ;  it  was  infinitely  worse 
than  being  coerced  and  herded  as  in  the  older  days ;  and  Aunt 
Hamley  intended  that  she  should  feel  it  worse.  To  add  to  Pat- 
ricia's troubles,  there  was  not  only  "a  cut"  between  the  Abbey 
Holme  people  and  the  Fletchers,  owing  to  their  taking  Alice 
Garth  without  a  character — which  cut  perhaps  Patricia  might 
have  ignored  in  any  circumstances,  and  more  especially  in  these 
present  ones  —but  they  were  away.  Had  they  been  at  koine, 

Y 


3Qg  "WHAT  WOULD  YOD  DO,  LOVE?" 

poor  Garth  would  not  have  been  ruined.     So  that  she  was  ut- 
terly alone  at  home  and  without  a  friend  abroad. 

Dora  would  have  been  kind  to  her  in  secret,  and,  to  do  her  jus- 
tice, always  tried  to  put  in  a  conciliatory  word  for  her  when  she 
could  without  hurting  herself,  and  which  Mrs.  Hamley,  even 
while  she  rebuked,  treasured  up  as  evidence  of  her  favourite's 
sweet  and  lovely  nature ;  but  Patricia  would  have  none  oi  her. 
Her  heart  had  turned  against  the  Dora  of  the  actual,  and  she 
refused  to  be  caressed  back  to  belief.  The  Dora  she  had  loved 
had  died,  and  had  left  behind  her  nothing  but  a  memory  and  a 
regret.  The  Dora  who  remained  was  a  mere  show,  a  mask,  an 
unreality  ;  and  she  would  not  join  hands  again  with  one  who 
had  deceived  her  as  she  had  done.  Her  self-respect,  too,  was 
outraged  at  having  been  made  a  tool  wherewith  to  work  ini- 
quity, and  her  sense  of  honour  had  been  revolted.  She  had 
touched  pitch  and  she  felt  defiled.  And  yet  perhaps,  Patricia 
in  future  years  would  develop  sufficient  passionateness  to  be 
able  to  touch  pitch  voluntarily  in  certain  circumstances — as  the 
offering  of  her  soul  to  the  good  of  a  cause.  But  if  this  might 
be  true  of  the  future  it  certainly  was  not  of  the  present,  when 
the  law  of  girlish  righteousness  allowed  of  no  deviation  from 
the  right  line,  and  when  she  was  both  too  young  and  too  straight- 
forward for  casuistry ;  and  when,  take  it  how  she  would,  sup- 
plying Sydney  Lowe  with  money  stolen  from  Mr.  Hamley  was 
scarcely  reason  enough  why  she  should  have  been  dragged  into 
the  mire  of  a  crime,  innocent  of  all  criminal  knowledge  though 
»he  was.  So  there  she  stood  amidst  the  wreck  of  more  than 
home  and  fortune ;  like  some  worshipper  of  the  old-time  gods 
taken  by  the  initiated  into  the  secret  places,  and  shown  the 
tricks  by  which  the  awful  holy  thunderings  were  made,  and  the 
glorious  beauty  of  the  Divine  revealed,  and  the  kneeling  crowd 
held  captive  to  the  faith  it  never  proved. 

Night  and  day  she  thought  of  all  this — of  the  Dora  she  had 
loved  and  believed  in  and  of  the  Dora  she  had  found  in  the  place 
of  her  ideal  j  of  the  good  success  of  bas  eness ;  and  then  of  her 
old  life  at  Barsands ;  till  she  scarcely  k  new  which  was  real,  the 
present  or  the  past,  and  whether  her  uncle's  teaching  had  been 
right  or  her  aunt's  commentary  wrong.  Her  mental  condition 
was  in  truth  for  the  moment  slightly  clouded.  Her  brain  had 
been  overtaxed,  and  was  fogged  like  an  imperfect  photographic 


ABANDONED  TO  HERSELF.  387 

plate.  She  had  to  fight  through  it  alone.  It  was  a  bad  pas? 
for  a  girl  given  to  singleness  of  mind  and  purpose  and  belief, 
but  it  had  to  be  gone  through ;  and  there  was  so  much  good 
in  it  that  the  struggle  would  make  her  all  the  stronger,  and  she 
would  be  a  nobler  woman  at  the  end  of  it  than  she  was  in  the 
beginning.  • 

The  warm  spring  days  were  mellowing  into  summer.  There 
was  no  earthly  reason,  thought  Patricia,  why  she  should  not  sit 
out  of  doors  under  the  shade  of  copper  beeches  and  elms  and 
horn-beams,  as  well  as  in  the  heavy  rooms  of  the  magnificent 
mansion.  And  as  no  one  asked,  though  Mrs.  Hamley  always 
took  care  to  know,  where  she  was,  she  did  sit  out  of  doors  the 
whole  day  long ;  which  was  just  the  best  thing  she  could  have 
done.  Had  she  exhausted  her  strength  at  this  time  she  would 
probably  have  fallen  ill.  All  she  wanted  was  quiet  and  fresh 
air,  and  to  be  left  to  regain  her  mental  clearness  undisturbed 
by  any  outside  influence  whatever. 

The  poor  girl  bore  herself  with  signal  patience  and  dignity 
all  this  miserable  time  of  undeserved  disgrace ;  and  with  as 
signal  loyalty.  Knowing  that  her  aunt  disliked  her  going 
about  alone,  she  would  not  have  left  the  immediate  home- 
grounds  under  any  temptation.  She  always  sat  in  one  place 
in  the  shrubbery,  out  of  sight  but  not  lost,  and  within  the 
range  oi  the  meal-time  gong.  The  day  when  she  had  been  late 
she  had  fallen  asleep,  but  she  never  let  herself  be  overtaken 
again ;  and  even  her  aunt,  disposed  as  she  was  to  see  her  in  an 
unfavourable  light  in  which  way  soever  she  was  facetted,  could 
not  but  acknowledge  that,  without  the  smallest  attempt  to  re- 
instate herself,  she  did  not  take  a  rebellious  advantage  of  her 
freedom,  but  ordered  her  life  with  as  faithful  a  regard  to  rules 
as  if  she  benefited  by  their  observance. 

Mrs.  Hamley  almost  wished  she  had  not  been  so  loyal.  It 
cut  the  ground  of  displeasure  from  under  her  own  feet,  and 
made  the  girl's  conduct  about  the  cheque  only  the  more  inex- 
plicable. For  who  indeed  could  understand  euch  a- strange 
mixture  of  qualities  1  she  used  to  say  peevishly ;  so  good  in 
some  things,  so  bad  in  others,  and  so  tiresome  in  all !  Perhaps 
it  was  wrong,  she  would  add,  to  wish  that  she  should  be  more 
wicked  than  she  was ;  but  it  would  be  more  comfortable  and 
more  harmonious.  These  composite  characters  were  trying  to 
deal  with,  and  gave  her  a  disagreeable  sense  of  unrest. 


388  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  BO,  LOVE  ?  " 

So  she  grumbled,  as  was  her  wont,  and  watched  with  a 
strange  confusion  of  mind,  half  anxiously,  half  fearfully,  for 
signs  of  greater  iniquity  or  for  symptoms  of  repentant  subjec- 
tion. And  when  neither  came  she  resented  her  disappointment 
as  an  offence.  This  was  one  phase  of  mind ;  another  was  a 
very  real  unhappiness  about  the  girl's  condition — when  she  did 
not  remember  that  she  was  angry.  She  used  to  watch  her 
wistfully  enough  when  Patricia  was  not  looking,  and  ever  with 
a  heartache  which  neither  her  pride  nor  her  anger  would  suffer 
to  be  seen.  She  noted  how  the  healthy  appetite  which  had  so 
much  distressed  her  in  the  first  days  by  its  unlimited  appro- 
priation of  dry  bread,  had  refined  now  into  a  sick  indifference 
to  food  altogether.  She  saw  how  thin  she  had  become,  how 
listless  in  her  movements,  how  feeble  in  her  gait ;  how  her 
once  responsive  face  was  fixed  and  rigid,  and  her  once  bright 
eyes  veiled  and  dreamy.  She  sometimes  longed  to  take  her  to 
her  bosom,  to  scold  her  viciously,  then  to  cry  over  her  and  for- 
give her,  and  consent  to  accept  the  whole  affair  as  a  mystery 
wherein  she  was  not  blameworthy.  And  then  she  remembered 
Lord  Merrian,  and  hardened  her  heart  like  an  English  Pharaoh. 
Besides,  Mrs.  Hamley's  temper  could  not  brook  mysteries  in 
the  minor  world  about  her.  She  claimed  to  be  supreme  pontiff 
to  whom  all  things  should  be  known  ;  and  if  she  felt  at  one 
moment  an  impulse  of  tenderness  she  was  able  to  damp  it  down 
into  manageable  displeasure  the  next  when  she  put  it  clearly 
before  her  that  Patricia  had  dared  to  have  a  secret,  and  to  keep 
it  from  her. 

In  the  midst  of  all  this,  Patricia's  daily  dress  got  shabby  ; 
and  a  letter  came  from  Gordon. 

For  her  own  sake  as  mistress  of  Abbey  Holme,  also-  for  a 
certain  womanliness  of  feeling  still  left  for  the  girl  amidst  all 
her  displeasure,  Mrs.  Hamley  must  keep  up  appearances  to 
high-water  mark.  She  could  no  more  allow  her  niece  to  be 
ill-dressed  now,  in  the  days  of  her  dire  disgrace,  than  if  she  had 
been  foremost  in  favour..  She  was  spiritually  the"  Cinderella  of 
the  family,  seated  among  the  ashes  weeping,  but  her  body  must 
be  clothed  with  decorous  magnificence  as  befitted  the  mansion 
in  which  she  had  her  place. 

Wherefore  one  day  at  breakfast  Aunt  Hamley  said  in  a  cold 
voice— 


ABANDONED  TO  HERSELF.      %.  589 

"Patricia,  oblige  me  by  not  wearing  that  gown  again." 

Patricia  started,  and  looked  up  as  if  awakened  from  a  dream. 
It  was  so  strange  to  be  spoken  to  again !  Dora  glanced  up 
with  a  friendly  little  congratulatory  smile  which  swept  from 
Patricia  to  Mrs.  Hainley,  and  on  to  Mrs.  Hamley's  husband  in 
an  impartial  way,  excluding  none. 

"Yes,  aunt,"  Patricia  exclaimed. 

Mrs.  Hamley  smiled  sarcastically. 

"  You  are  ready  with  your  promises,"  she  said.  "  Pray  what 
will  you  wear  instead  ? " 

"  I  don't  know,  aunt,"  she  said.     "  Have  I  any  other?" 

"  What  a  question  to  ask  !  "  cried  her  aunt  crossly.  "  A 
young  woman  of  your  age, not  to  know  what  gowns  she  has  to 
wear  !  Is  it  stupidity  or  affectation,  Patricia  ? " 

"  Stupidity  I  am  afraid,  aunt,"  said  Patricia  quietly. 

Mrs.  Hamlejr  hesitated  for  a  moment.  The  girl  spoke  with 
such  touching  simplicity  ;  her  sorrowful  face,  which  had  light- 
ened up  under  the  address,  was  so  full  of  ingenuous  humility  ; 
she  looked  so  glad  to  be  spoken  to  again,  and  yet  was  so  little 
self-assertive,  so  unaffected,  that  her  aunt  did  not  know 
whether  to  call  her  to  her  and  kiss  her  and  forgive  her,  or  scold 
her  for  being  so  wicked  when  she  was  so  nice.  She  was  so 
angry  with  her  for  her  stupidity — putting  herself  into  this 
miserable  position  when  she  might  have  made  such  a  brilliant 
alliance,  atoned  for  her  mysterious  crime,  and  done  them  all  so 
much  good  !  And  yet  she  was  so  sorry  for  her  ! 

Her  momentary  little  struggle  ended,  however,  in  the  main- 
tenance of  her  old  attitude  of  displeasure,  sO  she  only  answered 
as  coldly  as  she  had  spoken  before  : — 

"  Well,  never  mind  what  you  have  or  have  not.  You  will 
find  a  new  gown  in  your  room  to-day  ;  so  pray  condescend  to 
attend  a  little  to  mundane  things,  Patricia  ;  give  the  one  you 
are  wearing  to  Bignold  to  put  away,  and  do  not  let  me  have  to 
speak  to  you  about  your  personal  appearance  again.  You  are 
going  about  like  a  cinder-wench !  " 

"  I  did  not  know  I  was  shabby,"  said  Patricia  looking  at  her 
dress. 

"  Then  you  know  it  now,"  snapped  her  aunt. 

tl  Mrs.  Hamley  has  given  you  such  a  pretty  dress  1 "  said 
Dora  pleasantly. 


ggO  «  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  I  have  done  my  best  for  a  most  ungrateful  subject,"  said 
Mrs.  Ham  ley  with  her  martyr's  air. 

"  Thank  you,  aunty,  very  much,"  said  Patricia  turning  a  ten- 
der face  towards  her  ;  a  moist-eyed  face,  with  the  curved  lips 
slightly  quivering. 

"  Thank  your  uncle  whom  you  have  wronged,"  said  Mrs. 
Hamley  severely. 

"  Thank  you,  Mr.  Hamley,"  repeated  Patricia. 

"  Ah ! "  said  that  gentleman  plunging  and  fingering  his 
•whiskers,  and  not  sorry  to  see  the  bonds  relaxed  a  moment  ; 
for  though  he  too  was  angry  at  the  fault,  he  was  sorry  for  the 
person,  and  would  gladly  have  joined  hands  over  the  mystery 
weeks  ago,  and  have  accepted  it  and  reinstated  the  delinquent ; 
but  the  Lady  was  mistress,  and  he  found  it  best  to  follow  her 
lead  when  once  within  the  four  walls  of  Abbey  Holme.  Still 
he  was  pleased  at  this  little  break  so  far.  "  To  return  good 
for  evil,  eh  ? — heaping  coals  of  fire  ?  I  told  you  that  you  were 
welcome  to  your  diet  and  your  clothes,  and  I  am  a  man  of  my 
word.  I  don't  promise  and  when  the  time  comes  cry  off,  and 
don't  perform,  do  I,  Lady  ? " 

"  No,  Mr.  Hamley ;  you  always  fulfil  your  promises,"  said 
Mrs.  Hamley  ;  "  which  is  more  than  can  be  said  for  every  one." 

At  this  moment  the  butler  brought  in  the  letter-bag,  which 
was  opened  and  the  letters  distributed  by  Mr.  Hamley  as  usual, 
Among  them  came  that  long-expected,  long-desired  ship-letter, 
with  its  many  official  notifications,  its  signs  of  travel,  its  pro- 
mise of  abundance. 

"  For  Miss  Kemball,"  said  Mr.  Hamley,  throwing  it  across 
the  table. 

She  took  it.  A  mist  came  before  her  eyes.  She  forgot  her 
aunt  and  her  late  more  mollified  mood,  Dora's  pretty  little  con- 
gratulatory face,  Mr.  Hamley's  ostentatious  graciousness  ;  she 
forgot  Abbey  Holme  and  her  present  misery  and  all  that  was 
her  life  now — she  had  Gordon's  letter  ;  Gordon  was  alive  ;  he 
loved  her  ;  he  would  come  back  for  her  some  day  ;  he  believed 
in  her  and  would  trust  her. 

She  held  the  letter  in  her  hand,  breathless  while  she  looked 
at  it  and  took  in  the  fact  that  it  was  really  from  him — his 
hand-writing— paper  he  had  touched — words  into  which  he  had 
put  his  lif*  ;  unconscious  of  the  cold  inquiring  eyes  that  were 


ABANDONED  TO  HERSELF.  891 

looking  at  her,  weighing  and  measuring,  judging  and  condemn- 
ing. She  was  called  back  from  her  memory  of  the  frank,  fair, 
honest  face,  the  clear  voice  resonant  and  yet  so  tender,  and 
bright  blue  eyes  that  had  never  been  ashamed  to  meet  man  face 
to  face  and  that  would  not  be  afraid  to  meet  death  and  the 
Eternal — she  was  called  back  from  her  vision  of  the  dear  future 
when  he  should  come  and  take  her  hands  in  his  before  the 
whole  world,  and  lead  her  from  darkness  to  light,  from  imprison- 
ment to  freedom,  from  degradation  and  despair  to  life  and  love, 
Ly  her  aunt  saying  in  her  harshest  manner ;  "  When  you  have 
quite  finished  staring  at  that  envelope,  Patricia  ;  perhaps  you 
will  attend  to  your  uncle  saying  grace." 

They  had  never  had  breakfast  grace  at  Barsands  ;  but  they 
had  thanked  God  more  through  the  day. 

Then  the  vision  faded  away,  and  she  was  once  more  Patricia 
the  i-eputed  forger,  or  at  least  the  guilty  accomplice  ;  once 
more  a  dependant  in  disgrace  ;  the  truth  living  among  lies, 
which  they  had  had  the  power  to  make  appear  the  blackest  lie 
of  all. 

She  stood  up  with  the  rest,  and  walked  out  of  the  room 
with  the  rest ;  but  though  the  brief  moment  of  the  loosing  of 
the  spell  had  passed,  and  her  aunt  had  hardened  herself  against 
her  once  more,  and  she  was  only  Cinderella  among  her  ashes 
again,  she  felt  as  if  she  had  a  talisman  now  which  could  change 
all  things,  and  that  even  Aunt  Hamley  would  have  to  yield 
to  it. 

She  went  into  the  garden  to  her  usual  seat,  and  read  her 
letter.  It  was  a  long,  true,  and  loving  one  ;  the  second  Gordon 
had  written  though  the  first  she  had  not  received.  It  said  all 
that  words  could  say,  and  expressed  more  than  it  said.  It  spoke 
of  courage,  faith,  constancy,  patience,  and  of  the  reward  which 
comes  to  true  love  in  the  end.  Ic  told  her  how  she  was  his 
hope,  his  dream,  his  beloved ;  but  it  was  .the  letter  of  a  man 
as  well  as  of  a  lover,  and  of  a  sailor  above  all  ;  a  sailor  full  of 
professional  ardour  and  a  not  ignoble  ambition,  rejoicing  in  the 
life  to  which  he  had  devoted  himself  and  glorying  in  his  work. 
It  came  like  one  of  the  old  Barsands  breezes  into  the  dull  and 
stifling  fog  of  Milltown,  and  seemed  to  clear  the  horizon  of 
her  life.  It  roused  her  as  nothing  else  could  have  done,  and 
geemed  to  give  her  new  energy  and  to  bring  her  back  to  herself 


392  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO.  LOVE?" 

and  the  need  of  action  and  a  purpose.  It  was  like  the  lifting 
up  of  a  matt-rial  veil  from  her  eyes,  the  taking  of  a  weight 
from  her  hards.  She  belonged  not  only  to  herself  and  to  her 
aunt,  but  to  Gordon.  Was  she  living  now  as  his  wife  should 
live  ?  Was  this  dull  and  clouded  patience  under  injustice  the 
noblest  thing  she  could  do.  or  was  there  a  better  way  ?  Ought 
she  for  his  sake  to  remain  where  she  was  so  misjudged,  so  hardly 
punished  ? — or  ought  she  not  rather  to  withdraw  herself  from 
Abbey  Holme,  and,  ever  keeping  loyal  silence,  refuse  to  under- 
go more  humiliation  ?  Patience  and  humility  are  grand  virtues 
truly  ;  sweet  and  true  Christian  graces  ;  but  the  old,  heroic, 
pagan  self-respect,  which  also  was  integral  to  Patricia's  nature, 
was  a  virtue  too,  and  just  now  was  in  the  ascendant.  Hither- 
to she  had  proved  her  patience,  now  she  must  justify  her  self- 
honour. 

It  was  on  the  fourth  day  after  she  had  received  this  dear 
letter,  and  when  she  had  heard  Mr.  Hamley  say  how  he  had 
met  that  precious  pair  of  Tom  Noddies,  the  Fletchers,  in  the 
Market-place  that  day,  that  she  went  to  her  aunt  sitting  in  the 
drawing-room  as  usual,  with  her  many-coloured  worsteds  in 
her  hands,  with  dear  Dora  still  busy  at  Venetian  point  and 
butterflies  for  the  hair  by  her  own  little  especial  table.  It  was 
a  sunless  sultry  day,  but  only  one  window  of  the  room  was 
open  about  a  couple  of  inches  from  the  top. 

"  Aunt,"  said  Patricia  coming  in  and  going  up  to  her  aunt 
very  quietly  and  with  the  sadness  always  on  her  now,  but  with 
a  strange  look  of  determination  in  her  face  and  manner ;  "  May 
I  speak  to  you?  " 

Her  aunt  looked  up  at  her  curiously. 

"  Certainly,"  she  answered  with  a  surprised  kind  of  con- 
descension. "  What  is  it  you  wish  to  say  ? " 

"  I  cannot  go  on  living  like  this,"  said  Patricia  with  quivering 
earnestness. 

Mrs.  Hamley  bowed  her  head. 

1  And  what  do  you  propose  to  do  to  alter  it?  "  she  asked. 

'  Let  me  go  away,"  she  cried. 

'  Willingly.     Where  1— to  do  what  ? " 

'Let  me  earn  my  own  living,"  said  Patricia. 
'  Willingly  again.    But,"  with  Mrs.  Hamley's  special  smile, 
"  to  come  from  heroics  and  generalities  to  common-sense  details 


ABANDONED  TO  HERSELF.  893 

— how  do  you  propose  to  earn  your  own  living  t  As  a  gover- 
ness? What  can  you  teach?  For  my  own  sake  I  cannot 
allow  you  to  go  out  as  a  servant  ;  besides  you  cannot  wait 
at  table,  and  I  could  scarcely  recommend  your  honesty,"  she 
said  cruelly  ;  "  and  ability  to  steer  a  yacht  on  to  the  rocks, 
or  even  to  ride  barebacked,  will  not  T  fear  get  you  a  living. 
This  last  might  indeed  do  for  the  circus ;  but  I  see  no  other 
opening.  I  am  willing  to  discuss  any  scheme  with  you,  but  it 
must  be  a  rational  one." 

All  this  was  cruelly  said  ;  with  intentional  harshness  and 
insolence.  Patricia  turned  pale  and  her  hands  clasped  each 
other  with  a  nervous  pressure.  She  held  her  breath  for  a 
moment  ;  and  then  as  if  she  had  cast  her  anger  from  her  as  a 
meaner  tiling,  raised  her  eyes  and  said  with  a  sweet  and-touch- 
ing  dignity,  a  noble  patience  that  was  the  maturer  fruit  of  her 
former  girlish  cheerfulness  ;  "  I  know  that  I  am  very  ignorant, 
but  I  would  indeed  rather  go  out  as  a  servant,  earning  my  own 
bread  by  my  own  labour,  than  live  like  this." 

"  Are  you  so  very  cruelly  treated  here  ?  "  returned  Mrs. 
Hamley  as  if  asking  an  honest  question.  "Who  offends  you  ? 
Dora,  do  you  do  anything  to  offend  Patricia  ? "  Dora  shook 
her  head.  "  If  you  have  any  complaint  to  make,  Patricia,  pray 
make  it.  It  seems  to  me  that  you  are  left  very  much  to  your- 
self and  have  no  cause  to  grumble.  I  do  not  interfere  with 
you.  To  be  sure  I  would  not  like  you  to  disgrace  the  house 
by  any  wild  or  wicked  ways  ;  but,  failing  this,  I  really  do  not 
see  how  you  are  coerced  or  what  cause  you  have  to  complain." 

"  Ah,  aunt,  you  do  not  speak  as  you  feel — as  you  know," 
said  Patricia. 

"Thank  you,  Patricia.  At  my  age  it  is  not  quite  usual  to  be 
told  one  tells  falsehoods."  Mrs.  Hamley  said  this  with  omi- 
nous quietness.  It  was  merely  an  argument  she  was  holding, 
not  an  offence  she  was  resenting. 

"  I  did  not  mean  that  exactly,"  returned  Patricia ;  "  but  you 
want  to  try  me.  You  will  not  come  to  my  point,  and  when 
people  do  that " 

"  They  do  tell  falsehoods  ? "  she  said. 

"  In  a  way,  yes,"  answered  Patricia  bravely. 

Her  aunt  smiled  disagreeably. 


394  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?." 

• '  "  Are  you  adopting  exactly  the  right  method  to  make  things 
better  for  yourself  ? "  she  asked.  "  Shall  we,  for  your  sake  and 
before  you  commit  yourself  farther,  go  back  to  the  starting- 
point  1  What  do  you  purpose  to  do  if  you  leave  Abbey 
Holme  1 " 

"  I  see  nothing  now,"  she  said  with  a  candid  throwing  up  of 
her  cards.  After  a  pause,  she  added,  in  a  pleading  voice — 
"  Aunt,  will  you  let  me  go  to  the  Fletchers  for  a  little  while  ? 
I  know  they  are  at  home,  and  I  am  sure  they  would  take  me." 

"  As  a  dependant  ? — if  you  please.  Why  not  ?  It  will  be 
simply  a  change  of  place  not  circumstances,"  said  Mrs.  Hamley 
quietly. 

"  Aunt,  don't ! "  cried  Patricia  in  a  kind  of  agony.  "  Well ! " 
she  then  said,  pressing  her  hands  over  her  eyes,  "  let  me  go. 
Miss  Fletcher  will  understand  me  and  believe  me." 

Dora  flushed  a  little,  and  glanced  upward.  She  was  very 
sorry  for  the  necessity,  but  she  did  not  exactly  want  Patricia 
to  be  understood.  Mrs.  Hamley  flushed  too. 

«'  I  know  you  love  Miss  Fletcher  better  far  than  you  have 
ever  loved  me,"  she  began  in  a  level  tone  that  soon  rose  to  the 
graver  accent  of  displeasure,  and  that  finally  deepened  into 
anger.  "  Go  to  her  if  you  wish  it.  I  should  be  sorry  to  keep 
you.  Carry  your  false  tales  out  of  the  house,  and  make  out 
that  you  have  been  ill-treated  when  you  have  only  been  too 
kindly  considered.  Ungrateful,  disobedient,  untrustworthy  girl, 
you  leave  me  as  you  came  to  me,  a  creature  I  have  been  utterly 
unable  to  improve,  and,  with  all  my  kindness,  as  utterly  unable 
to  make  love  me.  Not  another  word.  Leave  me,  I  say.  If 
the  Fletchers,  or  any  one  else,  will  keep  you  till  you  are  of  age, 
when  I  can  wash  my  hands  of  you  for  ever,  I  shall  thank  them. 
Go  !  Will  you  go,  Patricia  ?  I  want  never  to  see  you  again  !  " 

"  Will  you  not  say  good-bye,  aunt  ? "  said  Patricia,  standing 
before  her,  holding  out  her  hands.  "  I  did  not  mean  to  vex 
you.  I  do  not  like  to  part  in  anger." 

"  No,  I  will  not  say  good-bye,"  answered  Aunt  Hamley. 
"  The  word  means  a  blessing.  I  cannot  bless  you.  Go !  " 

"  Aunt ! " 

The  depth  of  anguish  in  the  girl's  voice  made  Mrs.  Hamley's 
every  nerve  quiver ;  but  she  was  not  minded  to  yield  to  her 


ABANDONED  TO  HERSELF.  395 

weakness.  She  looked  resolutely  away  from  the  pleading  face, 
the  beseeching  figure,  the  imploring  gesture. 

"  Not  another  word.     Go  !  "  she  said  again. 

Patricia  turned  her  eyes  on  Dora.  Dora  was  crying,  with  a 
slightly  scared  look  on  her  flushed  face  ;— sincerely  sorry  for 
poor  Patricia ;  sorry,  too,  for  Mrs  Hamley,  who  wounded  her- 
self as  much  as  she  hurt  her  niece  ;  hating  herself  and  Sydney 
and  all  that  had  led  to  this  miserable  complication — neverthe- 
less keeping  silence. 

"  Good-bye  Dora,"  then  said  Patricia.  "  Make  my  aunt  for- 
give me,"  she  added,  as  with  a  stifled  sob  she  left  the  room. 

The  innocent  scapegoat  on  whom  was  laid  the  burden  of 
many  sins,  if  ever  she  needed  faith  of  the  best  kind  it  was  now ! 

That  day  Patricia  was  driven  down  to  the  Fletchers'  with  her 
boxes.  Bignold  had  had  orders  to  pack  up  everything  belong- 
ing to  Miss  Kemball,  and  the  coachman  took  her,  wondering, 
to  the  Hollies.  It  was  very  like  a  dismissal,  he  thought ;  more 
especially  when  he  saw  by  the  maid's  astonishment  that  the 
young  lady  was  not  expected. 

"  A  rumpus,  I  make  it  out,"  he  said  to  Mary  Anne  confiden- 
tially ;  and  Mary  Anne  thought  he  was  about  right. 

"  My  child  !  '*  cried  Catherine  Fletcher  as  Patricia  came  into 
the  room,  the  shadow  of  her  former  self;  thin  to  as  much 
gauntness  as  a  young  girl  can  have;  depressed,  strange,  sub- 
dued ;  all  her  brightness  dulled  ;  her  former  abounding  vitality 
gone ;  the  whole  being  and  manner  of  the  brave  and  cheerful 
Barsands  nymph  changed  as  if  she  had  been  transformed — • 
changed  as  a  green  wood  is  changed  when  a  fire  or  a  storm  has 
swept  through  it.  "  Good  heavens  what  has  happened  1 "  she 
cried  in  real  alarm. 

"  Oh  !  Miss  Fletcher,  do  not  think  me  mad,  but  do  take  mo 
for  awhile  !  Let  this  be  my  home  ;  I  have  none  other !  " 
cried  Patricia  flinging  herself  into  her  arms.  "  You  are  ray 
only  friends.  Keep  me  just  a  little  while  till  I  can  keep  my- 
self." 

"  Child— my  dear,  dear  girl!  what  is  all  this  about  1 "  cried 
Dr.  Fletcher  1  coming  to  her. 

She  held  out  her  hands. 

"  Will  you  take  me,  Dr.  Fletcher  1 "  she  cried  prayerfully. 
"  Just  for  a  little  while  till  I  get  strong  and  can  see  my  way  ? " 


396  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

His  face  changed. 

"  For  life,  if  you  will,  Patricia,"  he  answered,  holding  her 
hands  in  his. '  "'Don't  say,  '  only  for  a  little  while.' " 

"  Oh,  how  kind  you  are,"  Patricia  said,  looking  into  his 
face  ;  "  but  don't  be  too  kind  to  me  just  now — I  don't  want  to 
cry." 

"I  should  not  like  to  see  you  do  anything  weak  or  silly," 
said  Miss  Fletcher  gravely ;  "  so  don't  cry,  but  tell  us  what  it 
all  means." 

"  It  means  that  I  am  in  utter  disgrace  at  Abhey  Holme,  and 
that  my  life  is  too  intolerable  there.  I  cannot  go  on  as  I  am," 
said  Patricia ;  "  so  I  asked  aunt  if  I  might  come  here.  I  felt 
sure  you  would  take  me  for  a  few  days ;  and  she  was  angry, 
and  sent  me  with  all  my  things,  as  if  to  live  here.  This  was 
her  punishment  to  me  because  I  asked." 

"She  was  quite  right,"  said  Catherine  Fletcher  kindly 
"  She  never  did  a  better  nor  a  wiser  thing.  She  knew  that  she 
could  not  have  made  me  a  more  delightful  present  if  she  had 
given  me  half  her  wealth." 

"  Quite  right,"  repeated  Dr.  Fletcher.  "  I  scarcely  gave  the 
old  lady  credit  for  such  perspicacity.  .  So  now,  missy,  you  are 
at  home  remember — at  home  for  life  if  you  will." 

"But  now  you  must  hear  my  story  before  you  take  me," 
said  Patricia  with  her  eager  candour.  "  I  do  not  think  you 
will  disbelieve  me,  but  it  is  just  possible  you  may,  and  I  should 
like  you  to  know  what  has  happened." 

"Will  it  take  long?  Shall  I  keep  the  carriage  with  the 
boxes  at  the  door  till  you  have  made  your  confession  1  or  shall 
I  walk  by  faith  and  have  them  carried  into  the  blue  bedroom  ? " 
asked  Miss  Fletcher  pleasantly. 

"  You  had  better  keep  them  till  you  have  heard,"  was  the 
grave  answer. 

"  As  if  my  Patricia  could  do  anything  worthy  of  condemna- 
tion ! "  said  Catherine  Fletcher,  putting  her  comfortable  arm 
round  the  girl's  neck  and  looking  into  her  face  lovingly. 

Patricia  caught  her  hand,  and  kept  it  there  on  her  shoulder. 

"  You  believe  me  then  ?  you  will  believe  me,  however  much 
appearances  are  against  me  ? " 

"  If  you  say  that  you  are  innocent — yes,"  answered  Catherine 
emphatically. 


ABANDONED  TO  HERSELF.  397 

"  And  you  too  1 "  Patricia  turned  to  Dr.  Fletcher. 

"  I  ?  I  would  not  believe  that  you  could  do  anything  wrong 
if  you  tried,"  he  said.  "And  if  you  were  even  to  confess  to  a 
grave  misdemeanor,  I  think  I  should  have  recourse  to  a  blister 
on  your  head  and  a  dose  of  blue  pill.  I  would  rather  accept 
the  theory  of  temporary  monomania  than  that  of  intentional 
immorality." 

She  drew  a  long  breath. 

"  That  is  comforting,"  she  said.  "  It  seems  to  heal  me  some- 
how." 

Then  with  her  hands  clasped  over  her  friend's,  but  every 
now  and  then  turning  her  eyes  to  that  friend's  brother,  she 
made  her  simple  statement — how  that  she  had  been  asked  to 
change  a  cheque  at  the  bank  and  to  say  nothing  about  it ;  how 
that  she  had  done  so,  and  had  agreed  to  say  nothing  about  it ; 
how  that  cheque  had  turned  out  to  be  a  forgery,  for  which  she 
was  held  responsible  because  of  her  silence. 

"  But,"  she  said  with  a  kindling  face,  "  as  I  promised  faith- 
fully not  to  tell,  I  must  keep  my  word,  whatever  it  costs  me. 
I  know  nothing  about  it  in  any  way.  I  simply  did  what  I  was 
asked  to  do,  and  I  had  hot  the  faintest  idea  there  was  any 
wrong  connected  with  it." 

'*  And  the  person  who  asked  you  knows  all  that  has  happened 
since  ] "  asked  Dr.  Fletcher. 

"  Yes,"  answered  Patricia. 

"  And  has  made  no  sign  ] " 

"No,"  she  said;  "but,"  nervously,  " please  do  not  ask  me 
any  questions.  I  want  to  say  nothing,  because  I  might  say 
too  much  if  I  did.  I  must  be  true  to  my  word." 

"  So  you  shall  be,  dear,"  said  Miss  Fletcher,  kissing  her. 
"  We  will  never  question  you.  We  both  believe  in  you  im- 
plicitly, don't  we,  Henry  ?  and  can  see  how  it  all  happened  as 
clearly  as  if  we  had  been  there.  So  now  go  up-stairs  and  take 
off  your  things.  At  last  I  have  a  daughter  of  my  own  1 " 

"  A  friend  to  share  our  home,  to  make  it  bright  for  us  and 
to  make  her  own  happiness  in  it,"  said  Dr.  Fletcher  hurriedly. 

"It  is  so  strange  to  hear  myself  loved  again.  I  scarcely 
know  if  it  is  pain  or  pleasure.  It  feels  almost  too  strong  for 
me,"  Patricia  murmured  rather  than  spoke,  pushing  up  her  hair 
dreamily. 


gg^  "WHAT  WOT'T,'"*  VOtT  DO,  L 

Brother  and  sister  exchanged  looks. 

«  Come,  dear,"  said  Catherine  Fletcher  briskly,  "  we  don  t 
dream  at  the  Hollies.  We  must  have  the  boxes  seen  to,  and 
your  things  put  away,  child  ;  and,  now  I  remember,  there  are 
three  or  four  gowns  and  things  of  mine  hanging  up  in  your 
wardrobe.  What  an  intrusion  !  Come,  let  us  make  haste  and 
get  all  in  order  before  dinner-time." 

Her  voice  and  manner  roused  the  girl  pleasantly.  With  a 
little  laugh  that  had  just  the  beginning  of  a  natural  joyousness 
in  it,  she  left  the  room  with  her  friend,  and  in  less  than  an 
hour  was  unpacked  and  homed,  with  a  delicious  sentiment  of 
rest  and  peace  stealing  like  sleep  over  her. 

When  they  were  alone  together,  Catherine  asked  her  brother ; 
"  What  do  you  think  of  all  this,  Henry  ?" 
•    "  I  think  it  is  evident ;  Miss  Drummond,"  he  answered. 

<  •'  So  I  think ;  but  what  does  it  all  mean  1  There  is  a  mystery 
beyond  ;  what  can  it  be  ?  " 

"  That  is  just  the  difficulty,"  he  said ;  "  but  the  person  for 
whom  Patricia  acted  was  evidently  '  dear  Dora,'  as  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley  calls  her." 

"  Yes ;  evidently ;  I  always  felt  she  was  underhand." 

"  Tyranny.  Tyrants  make  slaves,  and  all  slaves  are  false," 
was  his  answer. 

"  But  how  cruelly  they  seem  to  have  treated  this  poor  child. 
How  changed  she  is  !  " 

Dr.  Fletcher's  quiet  brown  eyes  glanced  -with  an  angry  viv- 
acity— rare  in  him. 

"  Cruelly  !  They  have  tried  to  kill  her,  body  and  soul !  "  he 
cried.  "  As  if  cruelty  is  only  physical !  Why,  this  girl  has 
been  assassinated — murdered  !  All  that  was  best  and  most 
beautiful  in  her  they  have  tried  to  crush  out,  because  it  did  not 
square  with  their  wretched,  shallow  lives  !  Had  she  died 
under  their  hands  it  would  have  been  substantially  murder — 
if  not  legally  so." 

He  spoke  with  a  vehemence  his  sister  never  remembered  to 
have  noted  in  him  before.  She  looked  at  him  anxiously  ;  then 
rubbed  her  eyes  with  her  forefingers,  which  was  a  trick  of  hers 
when  she  was  puzzled.  Just  now  Henry  puzzled  her  immense- 
ly ;  and  the  key  to  the  riddle  was  wanting. 


DISILLUSIONED.  399 


CHAPTER  XXXVL 

DISILLUSIONED. 

0  other  arrangement  could  have  helped  Patricia  at  this 
moment  so  well  as  this  of  making  her  home  with  the 
Fletchers.  Not  even  the  return  of  Gordon  and  the 
fulness  of  her  love  with  him  would  have  done  her  so  much 
good — taking  the  phrase  in  its  highest  sense.  Had  he  come 
back  and  married  her  off  hand,  as  he  would  have  done,  she 
would  have  been  intensely  happy,  of  course ;  and  happiness 
with  some  natures  is  a  fine  soil  for  the  growth  of  the  lovelier 
virtues ;  but  she  would  not  have  learnt  all  she  was  learning 
now,  and  she  would  therefore  have  lost  the  spiritual  richness 
given  by  the  sympathy  which  comes  of  knowledge. 

She  was  eminently  purposeful  in  character,  and  she  was 
leading  now  a  purposeful  life.  And  one  different  in  kind  from 
anything  she  had  known  before.  As  her  uncle's  housekeeper 
and  companion  at  Barsands,  she  had  had  her  work  and  her  uses 
in  a  small  sphere,  but  wholesome  so  far  as  it  went ;  but  here 
and  now  her  horizon  was  enlarged,  and  her  mind  gained  in 
proportion.  She  was  Doctor  Fletcher's  pupil  indoors,  and 
Catherine's  companion  abroad.  By  the  one,  her  intellect  was 
trained  with  more  mastership  than  it  had  ever  been  trained  be- 
fore :  and  the  other  took  her  among  her  old  friends,  the  poor, 
where  she  must  perforce  pity  and  was  able  to  help.  Her  life 
was  passed  out  of  herself  as  it  used  to  be  at  Barsands,  but  on  a 
higher  platform ;  and  the  more  it  was  dedicated  to  the  service 
of  others,  the  more  her  own  sorrows  and  perplexities  fell  into 
the  background  and  became  of  less  magnitude  and  importance. 
She  went  among  the  poor  and  heard  the  sorrowful  stories  of 
their  lives  ;  she  saw  their  hard  struggles  with  misery,  disease, 
and  debt ;  and  she  watched  their  pathetic  patience  under  their 
afflictions.  Sometimes  it  was  their  brutish  patience,  the  sub- 
mission of  "dumb  driven  cattle"  too  spiritless  to  wish  for 
better  things,  too  degraded  to  strive  for  them ;  and  sometimes, 


400  u  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

it  was  the  recklessness  which  grows  on  that  sandy  soil  where 
there  is  no  hope — the  scamped  work,  the  filched  time,  the 
husbands  who  left  their  wives  to  starve,  and  cared  neither  for 
home  nor  duty  so -long  as  they  could  drink  away  their  ill-earned 
wages ;  the  wives  that  were  slatternly  shrews  who  drank  too, 
and  cast  to  the  winds  every  womanly  virtue  and  every  lesson 
of  decent  living;  the  mothers  whose  children  were  unwelcome 
enemies,  fetters  and  hindrances  in  the  great  battle  of  life,  so 
many  extra  mouths  to  feed  out  of  the  common  stock,  which 
they  wished  the  fever  or  the  frosts  would  take  away,  and  which 
were  taken  away  with  at  least  the  help  of  neglect  if  of  nothing 
more  active ;  men  and  women  whom  poverty,  ignorance,  and 
the  terrible  conflict  in  which  they  found  themselves  worsted  on 
all  sides,  oppressed  by  man,  forgotten  by  God,  had  reduced  to 
the  level  of  savages,  and  some  to  the  level  of  beasts — all  this 
she  saw  with  a  burning  heart ;  her  inherent  desire  to  be  of  use 
breaking  out  with  tenfold  force  as  she  came  to  a  more  accurate 
knowledge  of  the  work  that  had  to  be  done.  And  she  was  of 
use,  and  never  weary.  Like  Catherine  herself,  she  gave  up 
herself  to  the  service  of  humanity  and  to  the  alleviation  of 
suffering.  Her  life  was  passed  among  the  poor,  with  no  superior 
patronage  demanding  gratitude  and  submission,  no  fine  lady 
daintiness  playing  at  benevolence  for  a  country  pastime  that 
went  no  deeper  than  croquet  or  a  new  costume  ;  but  as  a  sister, 
a  child,  more  richly  endowed  than  themselves,  and  sharing  her 
treasures  with  those  who  had  none.  Reading  to  the  sick  and 
to  the  old ;  taking  girlish  gifts  of  use,  or  prettiness,  or  pleasure 
only,  to  the  children ;  adding  the  grace  and  brightness  of  her 
youth  to  the  motherly  prevision  of  Miss  Fletcher ;  comforting 
those  in  sorrow  ;  helping  those  in  need ;  speaking  good  words 
of  human  fellowship  to  those  who  had  hitherto  so  sorely  failed 
—digging  down  into  these  arid  souls  for  the  sweet  waters  of 
conscience  and  self-respect,  and  seldom  digging  in  vain — this 
was  her  work  now  done  hand  in  hand  with  her  older  friend. 
And  it  made  a  beautiful  life  for  her  ;  a  life  full  of  blessing  given 
and  received ;  a  life  wherein  she  grew  into  a  loveliness  of  soul 
and  body  surpassing  all  she  had  yet  attaine'd ;  a  life  which 
gave  back  the  nobleness  it  wrought  and  the  happiness  it  dis- 
pensed, such  as  is  ever  found,  no  matter  what  the  pattern  of 
their  flag,  by  those  who  have  thus  consecrated  themselves  to 
this  service  of  humanity*. 


DISILLUSIONED.  401 

In  the  beautiful  activities  of  the  present  she  wondered  more 
than  ever  at  the  purposeless  existence  of  Abbey  Holme  ;  its 
ladylike  excuses  for  idleness  in  those  eternal  strips  of  needle- 
work and  endless  rolls  of  parti-coloured  knitting  which  filled 
up  the  hours  for  her  aunt  and  Dora  with  such  a  comfortable 
conviction  of  industry  ;  its  want  of  depth  at  home  or  of  interest 
abroad  ;  its  absence  of  all  object  or  intention  save  the  mainte- 
nance of  the  proprieties  and  the  smoothest  manner  of  passing 
time.  She  wondered  just  as  much  now  at  their  material  ar- 
rangements too,  as  she  did  in  the  beginning  ;  and  still  more  at 
herself,  that  she  had  lived  through  them  for  tb^  ^  long  weary 
months.  How  stifling  it  was !  Those  dreadful  flues  which 
went  through  the  house  and  made  it  all  as  hot  as  a  greenhouse ; 
those  thick  velvet  pile  carpets  and  heavy  curtains  and  closed 
windows  and  huge  fires  ;  those  dull  evenings  when  she  was 
expected  to  interest  herself  in  bdzique  which  she  could  never 
understand,  and  was  not  allowed  to  read  or  employ  her  hands 
in  such  work  only  as  she  could  do — and  it  was  not  fine  work  ; 
those  dull  days  ;  those  languid,  compressed,  silent  weeks  and 
months  !  She  felt  she  could  not  have  lived  there  at  all  had  it 
not  been  for  Dora  ;  and  how  kind  Dora  was  in  the  beginning ! 
Kind,  yes,  always ;  at  the  end  quite  as  kind  as  in  the  beginning 
even  when  she  had  ruined  her  doing  her  best  to  make  her  pain 
less  painful  !  But  how  all  that  sweetness  of  manner  had  van- 
ished into  a  mere  bubble  of  no  meaning,  as  she  found  out  the 
unworthiness  underlying  the  real  nature  !  It  seemed  to  her, 
looking  back  and  reflecting,  that  Dora  would  have  been  less 
unworthy  had  she  been  less  amiable  ;  for  to  Patricia,  as  well  as 
to  Mr.  Hamley,  stratified  characters,  part  noble,  part  base,  were 
distressing,  and  she  thought  that  a  bad  person  had  better  be 
bad  all  through  than  only  in  bits ,  souls  that  are  like  Dead 
Sea  apples  being  apt  to  mislead  the  innocent  to  fatal  issues. 

Ah ;  it  was  a  dreadful  time  and  place  to  remember !  like 
gazing  back  into  a  prison,  where  "  an  angel  beautiful  and 
bright"  had  come  down  and  looked  her  in  the  face,  like  that 
angel  who  bewildered  the  poor  knight  of  whom  Dr.  Fletcher 
read  to  her  the  sweet  sad  story  the  other  night ;  an  angel  who 
had  made  the  gloom  shine  like  sunlight  while  she  stayed,  but 
who  had  vanished  one  day,  making  the  worst  darkness  of  all  ! 
Soinelimes  a  horrible  dread  used  to  come  over  her  that  perhaps 
z 


402  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

her  aunt  would  fall  into  a  softer  mood  towards  her  and  send  for 
her  again,  to  tell  her  she  was  forgiven,  and  that  she  was  to  be  a 
better  girl  for  the  future,  and  copy  Dora  with  more  zealous  ex- 
actness, and  be  sure  not  to  tell  any  more  stories,  or  have  to  do 
with  forgery  or  shameful  secrets.  She  used  to  wake  at  night 
in  terror,  dreaming  that  this  had  happened,  and  that  she  was 
being  dragged  back  to  the  Abbey  Holme  drawing-room  where 
she  could  not  find  the  door  and  where  the  windows  were  all 
closed.  It  was  a  dream  that  always  shook  her  nerves  for  days 
after,  and  that  made  both  Dr.  Fletcher  and  Catherine  intensely 
anxious  when  it  came,  for  it  was  a  sign  that  had  a  bad  meaning. 
Patricia,  however,  could  not  get  rid  of  the  thought ;  it  haunted 
her  waking  as  well  as  sleeping.  She  used  to  ask  herself  what 
she  should  do  if  this  chance  came  about  ;  and  sometimes  she 
used  to  ask  the  Fletchers,  with  a  clinging  kind  of  mental  terror 
that  distressed  them  even  more  than  did  her  dream.  When  she 
did,  Catherine,  to  cover  her  deeper  feeling,  would  laugh  and 
promise  to  hide  her  somewhere  among  the  rocks  like  an  old- 
world  fugitive  ;  but  the  feeding  would  be  difficult,  she  used  to 
say  ;  and  once  Dr.  Fletcher,  not  looking  up,  said  in  a  constrained 
manner  ;  "  It  will  be  your  own  fault  if  you  go  ;  you  have  a 
home  here  for  life,  if  you  wish  it." 

There  did  not  seem  to  be  much  chance,  however,  of  this 
recall.  As  things  stood,  Mrs.  Hamley  refused  to  see  either  the 
Fletchers  or  Patricia.  She  held  the  one  as  a  criminal  and  the 
others  as  her  aiders  and  abettors  ;  and,  as  she  said  in  her  note 
to  Patricia  wherein  she  declined  a  visit  her  niece  had  proffered, 
she  had  always  made  it  a  rule  in  life  to  give  up  the  acquain- 
tance of  people  who  did  wrong.  She  did  not  understand  else 
what  difference  those  who  honoured  the  Ten  Commandments 
could  make  between  vice  and  virtue  ;  and  as  she  considered 
that  Patricia  had  sinned  heinously,  she  necessarily  held  that 
Doctor  and  Miss  Fletcher  had  made  themselves  parties  to  her 
offence  by  taking  her  as  they  had  done  from  under  her  protec- 
tion, undoing  all  the  good  she  had  been  at  such  pains  to  effect, 
and  defying  her  right  of  anger  and  punishmejit. 

So  the  breach  was  very  wide  and  very  pronounced  between 
the  Hollies  and  Abbey  Holme,  and  Milltown  had  a  comfortable 
little  dish  of  gossip  to  discuss,  wherein  not  one  of  the  guesses 
was  true  and  not  an  arrow  hit  the  right  mark.  Enough  was 


DISILLUSIONED.  403 

known,  however,  for  abundant  speculation  ;  and  the  Milltown 
people  did  not  neglect  their  opportunitias. 

Chief  of  the  humble  friends  to  whom  Catherine  and  Patricia 
went  with  their  kind  acts  and  heartsome  words,  was  poor  Mrs. 
Garth  doing  her  brave  battle  with  misfortune  single  handed, 
and  bearing  her  husband's  collapse  as  well  as  their  joint  sorrow 
with  a  steadfast  courage  that  was  as  sublime  in  its  own  way  as 
any  of  those  deeds  of  heroism  which  have  stirred  the  world's 
imagination  for  all  time  and  changed  the  current  of  history. 
Ah,  how  many  of  these  poor  hard-handed,  rough-speeched 
brothers  and  sisters  of  ours,  whom  now  we  despise  as  "  the 
common  people"  just  admitted  into  the  outer  courts  of  humanity 
will  be  shining  angels  in  the  days  to  come  ;  while  we  who  wear 
soft  clothing  and  walk  delicately,  will  be  turned  down  in  the 
ranks  and  set  to  learn  some  elementary  lessons  of  virtue 
far  beneath  their  feet !  Between  the  Hamleys  and  the  Garths 
of  society  lie  more  gulfs  than  one  ;  and  the  "  wisdom  which  is 
conversant  with  God  "  does  not  always  dwell  with  the  former. 

Yet  how  brave  soever  Mrs  Garth  was,  her  path  was  very 
rough ;  and  she  felt  it  to  be  so.  There  was  no  lack  of  immedi- 
ate means ;  but  the  future — that  terrible  future  troubled  her 
greatly  ;  and  not  without  reason —  it  was  all  so  utterly  dark  ! 
Time  seemed  to  work  but  little  good  for  James.  He  was  still 
as  broken-spirited  as  ever  ;  though  to  be  sure  he  had  twice  done 
a  day's  work  for  Dr.  Fletcher,  and  it  seemed  to  have  heartened 
him  and  brought  back  a  flash  of  his  old  cheery  manhood  while 
the  impulse  to  be  doing  lasted.  The  worst  of  it  was,  it  lasted  for 
so  short  a  time ;  and  then  he  sank  back  into  the  wandering  idle- 
ness of  his  former  state,  haunting-  the  lanes  that  looked  on  to 
Long  Field  Farm,  and  breaking  his  heart  at  every  change  being 
wrought  in  field  or  fence.  If  he  had  lost  his  land  fairly,  perhaps 
he  would  have  been  as  brave  in  his  sorrow  as  his  wife;  but  it 
was  the  sense  of  having  been  tricked,  and  tricked  by  Mr.  Ham- 
ley  above  all  men,  that  was  the  poison  in  the  wound  and  hindered 
it  from  healing.  It  was  madness,  granted  ;  but  it  was  pitiable 
all  the  same. 

One  day  Patricia  was  out  for  a  walk  by  herself.  The  Fletch- 
ers were  calling  at  the  Quest,  and  she  was  to  be  picked  up  on 
their  way  home.  She  had  never  told  them  why  she  did  not 
care  to  go  to  the  grand  house,  but  they  could  imagine  jAbntv  of 


404  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

reasons,  if  none  of  them  the  true  one ;  and  she  was  therefore 
left  behind  as  a  matter  of  course,  without  questions  or  explana- 
tions. She  went  up  by  the  farm  on  her  way  to  meet  them, 
taking  the  lane  where  she  and  Dora  had  walked  that  botaniz- 
ing day  when  they  had  met  Lord  Merrian,  and  Mrs.  Garth,  as  the 
farmyard  Constance,  had  broken  the  conventional  canon  of  fit- 
ness by  railing  in  Doric  against  a  rich  man's  injustice. 

What  a  lifetime  had  passed  between  this  and  then  !  She  felt 
as  far  removed  from  the  perplexed  and  entangled  self  of  that 
day  as  she  had  felt  removed  then  from  the  joyous  Barsands  Pat- 
ricia who  had  never  known  a  heartache  and  never  a  tear,  till 
that  last  sad  hour  when  all  had  gone  to  wreck  together.  How 
changed  the  whole  aspect  of  life  was  now  from  what  it  had  been 
both  then  and  in  the  old,  old  days  of  the  dear  home  !  Little  in- 
trospective as  she  was,  her  heart  was  perforce  turned  back  on 
itself  to-dayand  she  couldnot  choose  but  look  within,  asking  her- 
self how  things  were  with  her  and  noting  where  they  differed  from 
the  past.  The  answer  was  well.  She  was  happier  now  than 
she  had  been,  in  spite  of  that  terrible  shadow  under  which  she 
lived  ;  but  how  much  graver,  how  much  less  joyous  !  how  the 
scales  of  girlish  blindness  and  unconscious  romance  had  fallen 
for  ever  from  her  eyes,  and  what  terrible  truths  had  been  re- 
vealed to  her  ! 

Then  she  thought  of  Lord  Merrian,  and  his  strange  love  lor 
her.  What  was  there  in  her,  a  simple  country  girl  without 
family  or  fortune,  to  attract  a  man  in  his  position  1  Why,  noth- 
ing !  It  was  just  a  day-dream  to  him — no  more  ;  his  reason  had 
gone  to  sleep,  and  he  had  wandered  in  his  dream.  She  remem- 
bered with  a  blush  that  one  rapid  thought  which  had  come  like 
a  vision  of  temptation,  of  the  good  she  could  do  the  world 
through  him,  and  the  power  she  would  have  had.  And  then 
she  looked  up,  as  if  some  one  had  been  walking  with  her  to 
whom  she  was  speaking  aloud,  as  she  thought ;  "  Bat  I  have 
found  that  I  can  do  good  as  I  am  ;  that  we  all  can  if  we  like  ; 
and  that  I  need  not  be  Lord  Merrian's  wife  to  make  a  few  hearts 
lighter  and  a  few  lives  better." 

The  root  of  this  thought  was  a  miserable  young  couple  fast 
going  to  ruin,  whom  Catherine  and  she  had  visited  much  and 
taken  in  hand  to  teach  aud  improve,  and  whom  they  had  both 
taught  and  improved.  The  chief  evil  had  been  the  young  wife's 


DISILLUSIONED.  405 

incapacity  and  the  young  husband's  impatience;  but  a  well-or- 
dered home,  the  means  whereof  had  been  partly  taught  and 
partly  given,  had  closed  the  ginshop  door  and  made  a  worthy 
household  out  of  a  pauperized  and  vicious  hovel.  This  was 
just  one  of  the  instances  of  remediable  ignorance  of  which  they 
so  often  spoke  at  the  Hollies,  where  it  was  held  as  a  cardinal 
article  of  faith  that  human  lives  can  be  redeemed  if  only  there 
is  energy  and  love  enough  to  do  it. 

And  while  she  was  thinking  thus  she  came  upon  the  gate 
where  James  Garth  usually  took  his  mournful  station ;  and 
found  him  standing  there  in  the  old  attitude,  his  chin  resting 
on  his  hands,  staring  down  on  the  fields  that  had  been  his 
father's,  but  would  never  be  his  son's.  He  was  so  wrapped  up 
in  his  own  thoughts,  that  he  neither  saw  nor  heard  her,  though 
she  said  "  Good-day,  Mr.  Garth,"  cheerily. 

Had  he  still  been  the  proprietor  of  Long  Field  Farm,  she 
might  have  called  him  Garth,  simply.  As  a  ruined  man  she 
was  careful  to  give  the  little  note  of  respect. 

As  he  did  not  hear  he  did  not  answer  her ;  and  then  she  drew 
down  into  the  gateway  and  touched  his  arm.  He  started  and 
muttered  a  savage  oath  ;  but  when  he  saw  who  it  was,  he 
dropped  his  eyes,  and  touching  his  battered  cap  said,  mildly 
enough : 

<;  Beg  pardon,  miss,  I  did  not  know  it  was  you." 

"  I  thought  you  were  coming  to  the  Hollies  again  to  finish 
that  bit  of  garden  you  left  half  done,"  said  Patricia,  not  as  an 
opening  by  way  of  improving  the  occasion,  but  simply  because 
she  thought  he  had  been  coming  ;  and  she  wanted  to  see  the 
bit  which  the  Fletchers  had  taken  in  from  the  field  finished  and 
made  into  the  rose-garden  they  said  should  be  called  after  her — 
"Patricia's  portion." 

"  I  have  no  heart  for  work  ! "  said  Garth  more  sadly  than 
sullenly,  turning  away. 

"  Oh  I  don't  say  that ! "  she  cried  with  a  kind  of  grieved  sur- 
prise in  her  voice ;  "  what  is  life  good  for  if  we  do  not  work  ! " 

"Life  is  good  for  nothing  now  to  me,"  he  answered. 

"  I  cannot  bear  to  hear  you  say  so  ;  is  that  like  a  man  ? "  she 
said  very  earnestly,  leaning  forward  and  looking  into  his  face. 
"  Why,  Mr.  Garth  !  I  should  have  thought  you  would  have  had 
more  courage  than  this  1 " 


406  "  WHAT  WOULD  VOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

u  It  has  taken  the  heart  out  of  me,"  he  said  ;  and  put  his 
head  down  into  his  hands  with  the  old  despairing  gesture. 

"  But  surely  the  very  good  of  trial  is  to  prove  our  strength  I  " 
Patricia  answered.  "  What  would  become  of  the  world  if  we 
all  gave  way  like  cowards  as  soon  as  things  went  wrong  !  And 
we  can  be  cowardly  in  mind  as  well  as  in  body." 

"  I  am  no  coward,  miss  1 "  said  Garth,  lifting  up  his  angry 
face. 

The  word  caught  and  stung  him,  not  unwholesomely. 

"  No,  I  dare  say  you  are  not ;  I  should  not  think  you  were," 
Patricia  answered  ;  "  at  least  not  in  the  usual  way.  But  what- 
ever you  may  be  in  one  way,  you  cannot  say  that  this  kind  of 
thing  is  either  bravo  or  manly !  It  does  no  good.  It  will  not 

five  you  back  your  farm — and  even  if  it  would,  all  this  gloomy 
espair  would  not  be  a  worthy  kind  of  purchase-money  ;  as  it 
is,  it  only  makes  you  more  miserable  than  you  need  be,  and  adds 
to  your  poor  wife's  troubles." 

"  It  is  well  for  a  young  lady  like  you  to  talk,"  said  James 
Garth  with  some  scorn.  "  A  soft  young  lady  as  has  never 
known  a  cross  nor  a  strain,  how  can  you  judge  for  a  man  like 
myself  with  such  a  sorrow  as  I  have  on  me  ? " 

"  Have  I  known  no  sorrows  ] "  answered  Patricia  in  a  low 
voice.  "  I  think  I  have  ;  and  very  bitter  ones  too  !  I  have 
lost  all  that  you  have,  Mr.  Garth — my  old  home  where  I  was 
brought  up,  and  where  I  was  so  happy  ;  my  uncle  who  was 
like  my  father  and  that  I  loved  like  my  father ;  my  only  friend ; 
and — more  • "  she  added  with  a  flushed  face  :  "  more  than  I 
can  tell  you.  And  I  too,  nearly  broke  down  as  you  have  done, 
but — "  with  the  old  Joan  of  Arc  look  in  her  bright  young  eyes 
lifted  up  so  straight  and  earnest  into  the  sullen  face  beside  her, 
"  I  made  a  better  fight  of  it  than  you  have  !  I  am  only  a  girl 
and  you  are  a  man — a  man  with  a  wife  and  children  depending 
on  you — but  I  would  have  cut  off  my  right  hand  before  I  would 
have  wasted  my  time  and  strength  and  neglected  every  duty  as 
you  have  done,  just  to  give  way  to  all  this  useless  regret !  It 
is  unworthy  of  you ;  and  however  angry  you  may  be  to  hear  me 
say  so,  I  fed  as  if  I  must !  " 

"  You  are  a  bold  speaker,  miss,"  said  Garth  with  a  dark  look- 
Once  the  sunny  temper  of  him  would  have  been  no  more 
ruffled  by  a  woman's  words  than  his  flesh  would  have  been  hurt 


DISILLUSIONED.  407 

by  a  child's  blow  ;  but  he  was  easily  made  angry  now — and  for 
the  moment  looked,  as  he  felt,  like  a  murderer. 

Patricia  shrank  back  at  his  eyes  ;  then  she  seemed  to  nerve 
herself,  and  held  out  her  hand. 

"  Forgive  me  if  I  have  spoken  too  roughly,"  she  said  with  a 
noble  self-surrender,  as  if  she  had  been  speaking  to  a  king. 
"  But  I  am  so  sorry  to  see  you  so  broken — I  do  so  long  to  know 
that  you  have  taken  your  griefs  into  your  own  hands,  and  con- 
quered them  as  a  brave  man  should,  that  perhaps  I  have  said 
too  much  !  You  are  doing  yourself  so  much  harm  too,  in  every 
way,  and  making  us  all  so  unhappy  !  I  want  you  to  forgive  me 
now  if  I  have  hurt  you,  but  to  try  and  be  braver  than  you  have 
been,  all  the  same.  You  mvst  come  out  of  this  trouble,  Mr. 
Garth  ! — you  must  be  a  man  and  conquer  it ! " 

She  spoke  passionately,  with  a  pleading  look  and  manner 
that  could  not  fail  to  touch  any  one,  not  a  madman  nor  a  savage, 
It  is  the  power  that  truth  and  love  possess  ;  the  faith  which  at 
times  removes  more  than  the  material  mountain. 

There  was  silence  for  some  moments,  he  looking  down,  she 
looking  at  him. 

"  Perhaps  you  mean  well,  miss,"  he  then  said  with  a  deep 
sigh,  and  turned  away  his  head. 

Whether  he  would  or  no  he  was  touched  ;  but  he  did  not 
want  to  yield  to  her.  He  had  not  taken  her  proffered  hand 
when  she  held  it  out  to  him,  now  she  put  it  into  his,  and  clasped 
her  fingers  over  the  rough  brown  skin. 

"  I  do  mean  it  well."  she  said  with  a  fervent  ring  in  her  voice. 
"  Show  me  that  you  believe  I  do,  and  that  you  are  not  angry 
at  my  speaking  so  plainly — for  after  all  you  are  so  much  older 
than  I — by  coming  to-morrow  to  the  Hollies.  If  you  would 
only  take  up  work  again,  Mr.  Garth,  you  would  conquer  every- 
thing— live  it  all  down  !  " 

"Wages  for  working  on  another  man's  property  are  not 
pleasant  to  a  man  who  has  been  his  own  master,  and  held  his 
own  land  all  his  life,  and  his  father's  before  him."  said  Garth. 

"  But  if  you  have  not  got  your  land  any  longer,  wages  are 
better  than  nothing,  and  work  on  any  man's  property  is  better 
than  no  work  at  all,"  said  Patricia  with  a  deeper  wisdom  than 
perhaps  she  knew.  "  Do  come  to  the  Hollies,  Mr.  Garth  !  you 
know  that  Doctor  and  Miss  Fletcher  are  as  much  interested  in 


408  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

you  as  if  you  were  their  brother.  I  cannot  tell  how  you  have 
distressed  them  by  the  way  in  which  you  have  borne  your 
trouble,  so  unlike  what  might  have  been  expected  from  you  !  " 

She  was  still  speaking  with  the  same  passion  of  earnestness ; 
pleading  with  the  man's  better  self  and  judgment  against  his 
lower  state  ;  hei  hand  in  his,  her  fingers  pressed  close  in  her 
zeal.  She  looked  like  some  girl  saint  preaching  the  truth  to  un- 
converted ears,  calling  the  darker  soul  into  the  higher  life  As 
indeed  she  was  ;  and  as  James  Garth  felt  her  to  be. 

Her  courage  and  enthusiasm  touched  the  dying  spark  of  man- 
hood in  him  ;  her  woman's  zeal  woke  up  his  pride  ;  her  frank 
friendliness  lifted  him  back  to  his  old  state  of  sell-respect,  and 
seemed  to  heal  the  wound  in  his  sore  soul ;  the  warm  girlish 
grasp  did  him  good,  as  he  told  his  wife  ;  and  looking  at  her 
with  his  hollow  eyes  kindly,  a  smile  came  over  his  gaunt  face 
and  he  said,  shaking  her  hand  : 

"  I'll  come  to-morrow,  miss  ,  I'd  scarce  be  a  man  if  I  could 
refuse  a  young  lady  like  you  who  speaks  so  well !  " 

And  as  they  stood  there,  with  the  warmth  of  the  moment  on 
them  both — she  to  save  and  he  to  yield — the  clatter  of  horses 
came  near,  and  Lord  Merrian,  riding  with  a  fair  pretty  girl, 
passed  them  at  a  slow  pace  and  took  in  the  whole  scene. 

They  had  never  met  since  that  last  interview  in  the  draw- 
ing-room at  Abbey  Holme  ;  and  when  they  did  meet  now  all 
things  were  changed.  Patricia  was  no  longer  the  possible  co- 
heiress with  Dora  Drummond  ;  no  longer  Mrs.  Hamley's  beau- 
tiful niece  who  was  worth  even  a  young  lord's  looking  after ; 
but  a  discarded  relative,  evidently  living  in  disgrace  and  as 
evidently  having  done  something  to  deserve  it.  And  Lord 
Merrian  was  no  longer  the  enthusiastic  Numa  worshipping  his 
hidden  Egeria,  but  the  wise  and  far-seeing  young  statesman 
who  had  just  ideas  on  the  value  of  matrimonial  alliances,  and 
who  had  come  to  the  rather  tardy  possession  of  his  senses  and 
tVe  knowledge"  that  a  Lady  Maud,  born  in  the  purple  and  edu- 
cated in  the  shibboleth  of  the  aristocracy  from  the  beginning, 
would  make  a  fitter  wife  for  him  than  even  a  Joan  of  Arc  who 
was  a  heretic  to  the  inner  creed,  and  not  quite  up  in  the  acci- 
dence of  the  outer  observances. 

Lady  Maud  was  a  good,  well-behaved,  placid  young  person, 
untroubled  by  doubt  social  or  religious,  and  who  would  have 


DISILLUSIONED,  409 

condemned  an  original  thought,  either  in  herself  or  any  other 
woman,  as  dangerous  and  unladylike.  She  was  one  of  those 
who  accept  the  present  arrangements  of  society  as  final,  and 
who  cannot  understand  what  people  find  to  perplex  and  dis- 
compose them.  There  are  the  Queen  and  royal  family  ;  the 
aristocracy  ;  the  two  sections  of  the  middle  elapses,  both  the 
moneyed  who  may  be  known  and  the  professional  and  poor 
who  may  not ;  and  then  there  are  the  common  people  who  have 
to  work  for  all  these  grander  creatures,  and  who  are  not  of  the 
same  human  nature  somehow,  neither  living  nor  suffering  nor 
yet  feeling  as. the  high  people,  and  who  are  so  horribly  vulgar 
and  dirty  ?  And  then  there  is  the  Christian  religion,  which  is 
the  only  religion  in  the  world ;  all  the  re't  being  shocking 
idolatries  destitute  of  the  first  principles  of  morality  ;  and  the 
English  Church,  which  is  the  only  true  centre  of  Christianity, 
every  other  embodiment  being  so  absurd  that  the  wonder  is  how 
people  can  be  found  to  believe  them ;  and  what  can  folks  find 
in  all  this  to  make  them  unhappy  or  discontented  1  Things  are 
as  they  were  ordered  from  the  beginning  ;  the  England  and 
English  society  of  this  our  nineteenth  century  being  the  very 
perfection  of  God's  counsels ,  and  people  are  very  wicked  who 
try  to  change  the  established  order.  To  be  sure  a  few  Acts  of 
Parliament  may  be  passed  that  just  touch  an  unimportant  law, 
but  nothing  more.  As  tor  these  dreadful  doctrines  of  liberty 
and  all  that,  Lady  Maud  thought  they  ought  to  be  put  a  stop 
to  and  done  something  with.  She  believed  they  were  all  mur- 
derers in  heart  who  held  them  ;  and  could  not  understand  any 
woman,  still  less  a  lady,  with  such  awful  opinions.  Neverthe- 
less, Philistine  as  she  was,  she  was  a  good  little  girl  who  would 
make  a  faithful  wife  and  a  tolerably  efficient  mother ;  who 
would  give  recherch6  dinners  to  ambassadors  and  royal  princes, 
and  would  regulate  her  household  with  discretion.  She  had  a 
fair  understanding,  and  was  by  no  means  dull  to  talk  to  if  you 
kept  in  the  shallows  ;  but  she  was  lost  on  all  subjects  wanting 
thought,  being  utterly  devoid  of  philosophic  instincts,  and  never 
seeing  the  cause  or  the  outfall  of  any  emotion  whatsoever. 
She  was  immensely  popular  in  society,  being  pretty,  accom- 
plished, amiable,  and  with  perfect  manners  ;  and  when  she 
caught  Lord  Merrian's  heart  at  the  rebound,  and  made  it  her 
own,  the  world  congratulated  him  on  his  good  luck  and  told 


410  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

him  he  had  chosen  the  very  girl  made  for  him.  So  they  were 
engaged  with  much  rejoicing  on  all  sides,  and  the  young  lord 
himself  felt  that  he  had  chosen  the  better  part. 

As  they  rode  along  the  lane,  however,  his  head  would  run 
on  Patricia  to-day.  She  seemed  very  near  to  him,  with  a 
strange  surge  of  memory  that  distressed  him  ;  for  he  was 
honest-hearted,  and  did  not  want  to  have  his  allegiance  to  the 
lady  of  his  choice  disturbed  even  by  a  memory.  He  was  quite 
content  with  his  pretty  fiancee,  and  had  no  wish  to  look  up 
into  heights  impossible  for  her  to  reach.  Still,  his  Egeria  had 
been  very  dear  to  him  !  She  had  been  like  his  good  angel — 
the  voice  which  had  called  to  him  from  above,  and  to  which 
he  had  replied  Excelsior — before  he  failed  and  fell. 

He  was  a  little  silent  as  they  rode  between  the  leafy  hedges. 
His  imagination,  always  his  strongest  or  his  weakest  point,  had 
invested  Patricia  with  even  more  than  her  rightful  share  of 
charm  and  beauty  ;  and  just  now  she  seemed  to  come  before 
his  eyes  like  some  glorified  creature,  half  angelic,  half  heroic, 
who  would  have  compelled  crowds  to  kneel  to  her  had  she  ap- 
peared and  spoken. 

Then  they  passed  the  Long  Field  gate,  and  he  saw  a  tall, 
rather  badly-dressed  girl,  with  her  hat  pushed  unbecomingly 
off  her  face,  standing  holding  a  peasant's  hand  in  hers  and  speak- 
ing to  him  as  equals  together  ;  speaking  to  him  with  the  same 
love,  the  same  passion,  the  same  fervour  as  she  used  to  show 
when  speaking  to  him,  Lord  Merrian,  a  gentleman  and  the  son 
of  a  peer. 

He  took  off  his  hat  as  he  passed  and  Patricia  bowed  too  ; 
but  the  spell  was  broken.  Henceforth  Lady  Maud  had  no 
need  to  fear  the  past.  There  would  be  no  rival  in  his  memory 
to  dwarf  her  mental  stature  and  pale  her  spiritual  charms. 
He  acknowledged  his  folly  and  the  blindness  of  his  fascination. 
That  kind  of  thing  would  never  have  done !  It  is  all  very 
well  to  talk  of  brotherhood  and  equality  and  helping  on  human- 
ity and  all  that  :  it  is  a  beautiful  theory,  and  one  that  warms 
one's  heart  when  speaking  of  it.  But  when  you  come  to  its 
practical  confession,  standing  thus  shaking  hands  with  a  dirty, 
unwashed,  unshaven  peasant — Lord  Merrian's  blue  blood  as- 
serted itself  then  with  an  indignant  throb  ;  and  Patricia  fell 
for  ever  from  her  pedestal.  She  was  simply  a  handsome  girl 


DISILLUSIONED.  411 

with  rather  low  tastes  and  an  inferior  kind  of  manner  ;  and 
he  wondered,  like  a  child  suddenly  conscious  that  its  coveted 
plaything  was  a  snake  and  would  have  stung  him,  what  they 
should  all  have  done  had  she  taken  him  at  his  word,  and  be- 
come Lady  Merrian  and  his  mother's  daughter-in-law.  What 
a  mercy  she  did  not  !  And  as  he  thought  this  he  looked  at 
Lady  Maud  with  as  much  gratitude  as  love,  and  closed  the 
Kemhall  episode  for  ever. 

Soon  after  this  the  Fletchers  drove  up,  and  Patricia  got  into 
the  carriage  with  them ;  but  not  before  she  had  made  Garth 
promise  again  that  he  would  come  to-morrow  to  finish  his  work 
in  the  garden,  and  not  before  she  had  poured  still  a  little  more 
life  and  courage  into  the  poor  fellow's  sunken  heart. 

"  What  an  extraordinary  thing,  that  girl  to  whom  you  bowed, 
shaking  hands  with  that  common  man  1  "  said  Lady  Maud 
after  a  long  pause.  , 

Lord  Merrian  looked  innocent. 

"  That  is  Miss  Kemball,"  he  said  ;  "  niece  of  the  people  who 
live  there,"  pointing  with  his  whip  to  Abbey  Holme.  "  She  is 
an  enthusiast,  and  goes  in  for  communism  and  all  that  ! " 

"And  you  know  her  !  "  Lady  Maud's  face  had  just  a  shade 
of  possible  displeasure  athwart  its  surprise.  "  She  is  not  quite 
in  your  style  I  should  think,"  with  a  nervous  little  laugh. 

"  No,  she  is  not ;  but  of  course  I  know  her  slightly,"  was 
his  answer,  made  with  a  reassuring  indifference  and  a  wise 
suppression  of  the  identity  of  Egeria. 

"  I  cannot  bear  to  see  women  go  out  of  their  sphere  in  this 
manner,"  said  Lady  Maud.  "  I  think  all  these  theories  and 
extravagance  perfectly  awful.  The  idea  of  any  one  holding 
the  position  of  a  lady  being  so  familiar  as  that  with  a  common 
man  !  I  wonder  how  she  could  !  " 

"  Yes,  it  is  odd  to  what  lengths  enthusiasm  will  carry 
people,"  said  Lord  Merrian  simply  ;  and  turned  the  conversa- 
tion by  a  master-stroke 


WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 


CHAPTER  XXXVIL 

HAMLEY,  M.P. 

fHE  whole  country  was  in  a  fever  of  excitement.  A  fete 
was  to  be  given  at  the  Quest,  surpassing  iu  magnificence 
anything  that  had  ever  been  done  before  even  in  that 
lordly  domain  ;  and  the  world  of  Milltown  stood  still  to  watch 
the  proceedings.  All  the  visitable  people  of  the  locality  were 
of  course  invited,  and  there  was  to  be  a  large  gathering  of 
notabilities  from  London  as  well  as  of  magnates  from  county 
places.  A  popular  novelist  who  went  into  society  for  his  raw 
material,  and  looked  on  a  dinner  as  copy  and  a  ball  as  a  dozen 
pages  written  to  his  hand  and  only  needing  to  be  transcribed  j 
a  handsome  young  poet  of  high  renown  who  made  love  to  mar- 
ried women  and  celebrated  them  afterwards  in  verse ;  a  sprink- 
ling of  able  editors,  modern  Joves  whose  thunder-bolts  tell,  and 
whom  the  great  ones  of  the  earth  are  fain  to  court  as  the  kings  of 
the  fourth  estate ;  and  a  couple  of  distinguished  artists  who 
lived  like  princes  and  with  them — represented  the  aristocracy 
of  talent  beside  whose  glories,  in  the  minds  of  some,  stars 
grow  dim  and  garters  and  ribbons  are  of-  no  more  value  than 
so  many  yards  of  coloured  tape.  it  indeed,  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men  were  represented  at  this  fete  ;  and  even  the 
industrial  had  his  envoy  in  the  person  of  a  rich  cotton-spinner 
who  had  bought  for  a  hundred  pounds  his  foreman's  invention 
for  the  better  .winding  of  thread,  and  who,  by  saving  fractions 
of  farthings  on  the  reels,  had  rolled  up  millions  of  pounds  as 
the.  gross  results.  • 

But  among  all  these  favoured  guests  bidden  to  see  the  show 
and  swell  the  court  of  the  local  royalties,  one  house  was  passed 
over ;  and  the  Hamleys  of  Abbey  Holme  were  not  invited. 

It  was  an  impolitic  omission  ;  and  no  one  knew  exactly  how 
it  came  to  pass.  When  things  turned  ill  in  consequence  the 
Countess  threw  the  blame  on  the  house  steward  ;  not  ashamed, 
proud  woman  though  she  was,  to  make  her  subordinate  suffer 


HAMLET,  M.P.  413 

for  her  own  deed.  On  his  side  the  steward  swore  that  her  lady- 
ship had  run  her  pen  through  the  name  when  she  went  over 
the  list ;  and  that  he  was  bound  to  obey  a  sign  as  much  as  a 
word. 

"  A  signal's  an  order,"  he  said  ;  and  his  hearers  agreed  with 
him  that  it  was. 

As  no  commission  of  inquiry  was  appointed,  and  the  private 
visiting-list  of  the  Quest  was  not  submitted  to  official  inspec- 
tion, the  thing  passed  as  an  inadvertence,  regrettable  but  by  no 
means  to  be  apologized  for,  even  when  the  consequences  be- 
came evident  a  week  or  so  later,  and  the  mistake  in  policy 
fructified  so  disastrously. 

By  whose  fault  however  it  might  have  been  that  it  came  to 
pass,  my  lady's  or  the  steward's,  the  fact  was  undeniable  ;  the 
Hamleys  were  not  invited  to  the  fete,  and  the  whole  country 
knew  of  the  slight.  It  was  delightful  to  Colonel  Lowe.  It  re- 
joiced his  spirits  like  his  morning  cordial  brewed  of  double 
strength,  and  stood  ior  so  much  per  centage  off  that  terrible 
mortgage  money  which  had  to  be  paid  else  Cragfoot  must  pass 
from  his  hands  like  a  dissolving  view.  It  reconciled  him  for 
a  moment  to  his  hard  fate  in  being  obliged  to  do  without  the 
cakes  he  had  already  eaten,  and  to  pay  for  the  pipers  to  whom 
he  had  danced.  It  was  a  day  worth  living  for,  he  said  to  his 
son,  to  see  that  old  shoe-black  slapped  in  the  face  as  he  de- 
served, and  he  hoped  he  should  live  to  see  him  slapped  on  the 
other  cheek  before  he  had  done  with  him. 

"I  should  like  to  see  him  a  beggar  at  my  door,"  he  said; 
"  and  I  would  not  give  him  a  crust  to  keep  him  from  starving." 

To  which  Sydney  answered  in  the  manner  of  a  rebuke  : 
"  There  is  no  good  in  wishing  impossibilities  ;  but  cannot  some 
one  put  a  bullet  through  his  head  ? " 

"  Easily,  my  boy,  if  no  hemp  was  handy,"  laughed  the  colonel 
unpleasantly. 

"  By  Jove  !  the  old  Italian  society  knew  what  it  was  about ; 
and  a  hired  bravo  is  a  useful  kind  of  scavenger  after  all,"  said 
Sydney. 

"  He  cleared  off  the  vermin,"  answered  his  father,  "  when 
all  other  means  had  failed,"  significantly;  and  Sydney's  thoughts 
went  back  from  James  Garth,  whom  in  his  heart  he  cursed  for 
cowardice,  to  Julia  Manley  to  whom  that  day  at  the  fete  he  had 


414  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

determined  to  propose.  There  was  no  help  for  it.  It  -was  big- 
amy sure  enough,  or  would  be,  and  bigamy  was  a  felony ;  but 
murder  would  have  even  more  unpleasant  consequences,  and 
between  the  two  he  took  credit  to  himself  for  choosing  the 
minor  crime.  He  had  not  chosen  without  long  deliberation, 
many  qualms,  and  a  few  angry  tears  ;  but  he  had  chosen  now, 
and  so  must  make  the  best  of  it  and  go  through  to  the  end. 

This  slight  stung  the  Hamleys  deeply.  It  was  too  evident  to 
be  concealed,  and  no  varnish  could  gloss  it  over.  It  hurt  the 
master  of  Abbey  Holme  in  his  most  sensitive  part — his  recog- 
nised social  position  ;  and  even  when  he  went  about  explaining 
to  every  one  that  the  reason  of  it  was — his  wife's  niece  had  re- 
fused the  offer  of  Lord  Merrian's  hand — he  did  himself  no  good 
and  mended  matters  not  a  whit.  For  the  mischief  of  it  was 
no  one  believed  him,  and  a  few  said  the  Quest  people  should 
really  take  it  up  and  prosecute  him  for  libel.  It  was  impossi- 
ble that  a  girl  in  her  senses,  and  without  prospects  to  be  called 
prospects,  should  have  refused  the  heir  to  an  earldom  ;  and  just 
as  impossible  that  she  should  have  had  the  chance.  Lord  Mer- 
rian  might  have  trifled  with  her  ;  they  saw  nothing  to  condemn 
in  that,  for  was  not  he  a  viscount  and  Patricia  Kemball  a  com- 
parative nobody  1 — and  her  vanity  might  have  taken  as  serious 
attentions  which  he  meant  as  just  so  much  amusement ;  but  he 
never  made  her  an  offer,  they  said  with  an  incredulous  intona- 
tion. It  was  not  in  the  nature  of  things,  and  some  one  told 
untruths.  It  was  just  one  of  that  conceited  fellow's  brags, 
said  Colonel  Lowe ;  or  the  girl's  own  falsehood  which  had  im- 
posed on  him. 

Thus,  though  Mr.  Hamley  talked  of  it  everywhere,  Patricia's 
lofty  acMon  gave  them  but  a  very  barren  kind  of  honour  at  the 
best.  To  be  able  to  boast  of  a  briHiant  offer  of  marriage  re- 
fused by  a  wrong-headed  young  person — his  wife's  niece — who 
had  absurd  ideas  about  loyalty,  when  half  the  world  doubted 
the  statement,  was  a  poqr  exchange  for  the  actual  recognition 
of  an  invitation  ;  and  so  the  master  of  Abbey  Holme  felt.  He 
was  not  a  business  man,  accustomed  to  weigh  the  comparative 
values  of  investments,  for  nothing  ;  and  he  understood  as  well 
as  most  the  worth  of  a  fact  over  that  of  a  word.  The  woid 
melted  into  air,  but  the  fact  stood  like  granite. 

Mr.  Hamley  was  scarcely  a  Christian  of  the  kind  to  receive 


HAMLEY,  M.P.  415 

an  affront  and  forbear  to  pay  it  back.  On  the  contrary,  he 
upheld  the  doctrine  of  an  eye  for  an  eye  as  the  soundest  ever 
preached,  and  boaeted  that  he  had  always  given  tit  for  tat  in 
his  life  ;  a  method  of  proceeding  quite  in  harmony  with  the 
fluent  good  nature  of  the  man  when  not  ruffled  nor  thwarted. 
He  was  in  no  wise  minded  now  that  "  the  Dovedales  "  should 
escape  their  tit ;  they  had  to  have  it,  he  said,  and  he  meant  to 
give  it  them,  hot  and  strong.  If  he  could  not  make  them  ser- 
viceable friends  he  would  be  their  formidable  foe  ;  and  as  they 
declined  to  give  him  a  hand  up  the  ladder,  he  \vould  teach 
them  what  ib  was  to  have  a  saw  rasping  their  own  rungs. 
They  wanted  Lord  Merrian  to  represent  the  borough,  did  they  1 
and  my  lady  had  canvassed  him  when  she  thought  he  would  be 
of  use,  had  she  1  She  seemed  to  have  forgotten  that  now,  but 
he  had  not ;  and  when  the  next  election  came,  as  it  would,  a 
fortnight  hence,  they  would  find  the  course  my  young  lord  was 
to  walk  over  pretty  hotly  contested,  and  in  all  probability  the 
peer  would  lose  what  the  parvenu  would  win.  He  had  the 
most  money  to  jingle  in  the  ears  of  the  free  and  enlightened  ; 
and,  ballot  or  no  ballot,  local  influence  tells  and  votes  are 
marketable  all  the  same  as  before. 

So  Mr.  Hamley  set  to  work  at  once  on  the  plan  of  his  cam- 
paign ;  and  soon  all  Milltown  was  on  fire  again  with  the  news 
this  time  that  Ledbury's  successful  office-boy  was  going  to  con- 
test the  borough  with  Lord  Merrian ;  and  every  one  said  he 
would  win.  He  had  large  local  influence,  and  he  represented 
the  self-made.  Though  a  swell  now  of  appalling  magnitude, 
had  he  not  known  hunger  in  his  day,  and  been  ragged  and 
barefooted  t  The  working  classes  held  a  kind  of  vested  right 
in  him  in  their  own  minds,  and  regarded  him  as  a  flower  from 
their  root,  a  crystal  from  their  clay.  And  beside  these  there 
were  the  people  who  disbelieve  in  youth  and  prefer  maturity 
without  any  reference  to  the  intrinsic  quality  of  either — people 
who  would  rather  trust  the  bag  to  a  bearded  Judas  than  to  a 
boy-saint  with  a  woman's  face,  and  to  whom  Mr.  Hamley,  as  a 
man  having  experience,  was  to  be  infinitely  preferred  to  a  raw 
lad  who  had  not  even  a  wife  to  help  him. 

The  game  was  by  no  means  desperate.     Indeed  it  looked 
marvellously  hopeful;  and  the  Countess  repented  herself  afresh- 
that  she  had  listened  to  pique  rather  than  prudence,  and  been 
more  instinctive  than  politic. 


41 C  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  BO,  LOVE  ?  " 

«'  Spite  never  pays,"  she  thought  ruefully ;  "  it  would  have 
been  better  if  I  had  asked  them  and  kept  that  monster  in  good 
humour." 

With  all  this  encouragement  the  monster  had  fierce  opponents 
as  well ;  none  fiercer  than  Colonel  Lowe,  who  made  the  vote  a 
personal  matter,  and  reseated  it  as  an  insult  offered  to  himselt 
if  yellow  was  worn  and  not  blue  ;  and  none  more  influential  in 
his  quiet  way  than  Dr.  Fletcher.  Between  an  impressionable 
young  soul  full  of  fluid  convictions,  and  a  cast-iron  mind  welded 
through  and  through  into  wrong  ones,  he  thought  there  was 
more  chance  of  good  from  the  former.  Lord  Mercian  would 
probably  drift  into  the  wrong  lobby  on  some  divisions,  but  then 
he  would  go  into  the  right  one  on  others ;  but  Mr.  Hamley 
would  be  invariably  wrong.  If  the  one  had  everything  to  learn, 
and  most  of  all  a  central  idea  round  '?rhich  his  theories  of  lite 
might  crystallize,  the  chances  were  even  between  learning  good 
and  evil  j  but  what  was  to  be  hoped  from  a  man  who  had 
adopted  finality,  and  perfected  his  views  on  every  point,  yet 
who  had  spelt  all  his  lessons  backward  and  learnt  nothing  of 
life  but  the  religion  of  success  ?  Wherefore,  though  the  bustle 
and  insincerity  of  an  election  time  were  not  much  in  Henry 
Fletcher's  way,  he  consented  to  be  one  of  Lord  Merrian's  com- 
mittee, not  because  he  affected  him  warmly  but  because  he 
wished  to  keep  out  the  other.  And  this  more  than  ever  widened 
the  breach  between  the  Hollies  and  Abbey  Holme,  and  gave 
-  increased  tangibility  to  Mr.  Hamley's  wrath. 

The  campaign,  though  short,  was  sharp. 

Mr.  Hamley  stood  on  the  high  Tory  interest.  He  despised 
as  trumpery  palterings  with  great  questions  all  the  boneless 
liberal-conservatism  of  young  England,  he  said  when  he  ad- 
dressed the  free  and  enlightened  on  his  nomination,  and  was 
required  to  give  the  text  of  his  convictions.  To  blow  hot  aL.d 
cold  was  not  his  motto,  and  whatever  he  was  he  was  Thorough. 
The  altar  and  the  throne  ;  our  glorious  institutions  and  out 
national  flag;  England  the  home  of  the  free,  and  the  knavish 
tricks  of  socialists  and  reds  confounded  by  the  high  good  sense 
of  the  people — that  was  his  platform — let  those  find  a  better 
who  could  !  The  people's  heart  was  good,  their  judgment  was 
sound.  They  knew  where  their  best  interests  were  to  be  found 
— in  the  union  of  all  classes,  not  in  class  division.  They  would 


HAMLEY,  M.P. 

vote  then,  for  the  man  who  understood  them  best,  who  had 
been  one  of  them,  and  whose  success  was  as  much  an  honour 
to  them  as  to  himself.  They  would  vote  for  him  rather  than 
for  the  young  gentleman  who  had  no  definite  policy  to  offer 
them,  who  knew  nothing  of  the  great  questions  he  was  setting 
himself  torward  to  decide,  and  who  would  be  simply  so  much 
material  for  clever  whips  and  unscrupulous  Ministers.  To 
elect  that  young  gentleman  would  be  to  confide  their  interests 
into  the  keeping  of  hands  that  could  not  hold  them,  to  steer 
by  a  weathercock  that  veered  with  every  breath.  As  for  the 
third  candidate,  who  had  been  sent  down  at  the  last  moment 
as  a  feeler  by  the  republicans,  he,  Mr.  Hamley,  being  a  law- 
abiding  man  did  not  recommend  the  horse-pond,  but  he  supposed 
the  men  of  Milltown  would  have  more  seli-respect  than  to 
choose  for  their  representative  a  friend  of  petroleum  and  the 
Communists ;  a  wretch  who  would  deluge  the  fair  face  of  Eng- 
land with  blood,  and  who  would  leave  neither  religion  nor 
morality  nor  yet  property  standing. 

His  speeches  and  addresses  which  were  written  for  him  were 
effective ;  his  showy  presence  also  had  its  own  value  •  his  ready 
tongue,  his  definite  views,  all  as  positive  and  final  as  the  multi- 
plication table,  pleased  many ;  his  money  did  more  ;  and  his 
uncompromising  toryism,  which  yet  bade  for  the  working  man 
as  integral  to  imperial  greatness,  did  most  of  all.  Milltown 
was  conservative  to  the  backbone ;  and  though  Lord  Merrian 
carried  many  of  the  gentry  and  the  more  independent  thinkers 
with  him,  his  admixture  of  philosophic  liberalism  gave  Mr. 
Hamley  just  the  advantage  which  won  the  day.  The  radical 
candidate  of  course  was  nowhere.  He  had  been  sent  down 
merely  as  a  gauge,  and  his  exit  from  the  town  was  ignominious. 

Thus  the  game  was  lost  and  won  in  spite  of  Colonel  Lowe 
and  Henry  Fletcher ;  and  Mr.  Hamley's  name  came  out  at  the 
head  of  the  poll,  beating  my  lord  by  some  scores. 

It  was  a  proud  day  for  him.  Jabez  Hamley,  M.P.  It  was 
a  glorious  rubber  in  the  game  of  bowls  that  had  begun  between 
him  and  the  Quest  since  that  memorable  day  of  omission  ! 
Jabez  Hamley,  M.P.,  and  my  young  lord  with  the  influence  of 
his  name,  his  earldom  in  the  distance,  and  the  flag  flying  from 
the  Quest  like  royalty  itself  at  home,  defeated.  Who  says  that 
the  working  man  has  not  the  power  of  station  and  riches  in  his 
AA 


418  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

hand  if  he  chooses!  Good  sense,  energy,  and  will — and  here 
you  see  him,  the  richest  landed  proprietor  of  Milltown,  and 
M.P.  for  the  borough  ! 

The  man's  self-congratulations  were  inexhaustible  and  even 
his  closest  adherents  were  weary  of  them.  He  was  as  if  pos- 
sessed by  a  peripatetic  demon  of  pride  and  elation,  and  neithei 
street  nor  road  was  free  from  him.  Wherever  you  went  you 
met  Mr.  Hamley,  florid,  condescending,  self-satisfied  ;  with  his 
head  held  high  and  his  shoulders  set  square  ;  his  radian* 
humour  shining  out  all  over  him  like  a  sun  ;  inexhaustible  in 
talk  of  the  election,  and  what  he  did,  and  how  he  had  beaten 
my  lord  by  pluck  and  energy  and  right  views  ;  and  how  splen- 
didly his  fellows  had  fought  for  him,  and  how  ill  my  lord  had 
managed  everything — yes,  even  with  my  lady  the  countess,  and 
the  young  person  he  was  to  marry  all  over  the  shop  with  their 
fair  speeches  and  more  tangible  bribes.  But  pluck  and  energy 
— "  Oh  !  that  eternal  pluck  and  energy  !  "  said  Mr.  Borrodaile 
sarcastically,  after  he  had  listened  with  smiling  politeness  to  a 
full  hour's  declamation  on  the  Hamley  qualities  as  interpreted 
by  the  Hamley  intellect. 

Hamley,  M.P. 

He  wrote  the  name  as  many  times  as  a  love-sick  school-girl 
writes  her  lover's  and  her  own.  He  spent  all  his  quiet  time  in 
devising  a  proper  flourish,  one  that  would  replace  the  ordinary 
Scroll  he  had  elaborated  up  to  this  time,  and  that  should  be  like 
an  ornamental  fence-work  about  the  cherished  initials.  He 
gave  Dora  a  new  bracelet  on  the  occasion,  with  "  From  Hamley 
M.P.,"  engraved  in  bossed  and  fanciful  letters  that  looked  like 
flowers  about  his  photograph,  which  formed  the  centre  orna- 
ment ;  and  he  bought  his  wife  a  diamond  ring,  which  he  pre- 
sented to  her  with  a  set  speech  that  pleased  the  poor  lady  whom 
long  habit  had  rendered  less  critical  than  of  old.  It  was  a 
speech  in  the  worst  possible  taste,  and  would  have  set  her  teeth 
on  edge  in  former  days ;  but  now  she  smiled  in  her  frosty  way, 
and  said  "  Thanks,  Mr.  Hamley,  you  are  very  kind,  and  I 
like  this  token  of  your  success."  And  she  was,  as  she  said, 
really  gratified  by  his  gift. 

Thus  the  Hamley  sun  shone  bright  and  warm,  and  there  was 
not  a  shadow  anywhere  save  one — Patricia  Kemball,  and  the 
breach  existing  between  her  and  them. 


HAMLEY,   M.P.  419 

As  for  the  "  cut  with  the  Dovedales/'as  Mr.  Haraley  phrased 
it,  he  regarded  that  now  as  a  providential  ovderi-ng — providence 
being  on  his  side.  Had  they  asked  him  to  the  fete  he  would 
have  still  been  their  humble  servant,  and  would  have  worked 
for  Lord  Merrian  for  the  wages  of  their  social  patronage  ;  but 
having  cast  him  off  they  had  made  a  free  man  of  him,  and  an 
M.P.  to  follow.  No,  there  was  not  a  shadow  anywhere  ;  and 
even  Patricia  Kemball  was  but  as  a  mote  in  the  sunbeam  of 
really  no  importance.  When  Mrs.  Hamley  dropped,  her  niece 
would  be  wiped  off  the  slate  as  though  she  had  never  been. 
He  had  no  kind  of  ill-feeling  to  her ;  quite  the  contrary ;  but 
she  had  been  a  mistake,  and  Mr.  Hamley  was  too  keen  a  man 
of  business  to  cherish  mistakes.  Things  that  begin  with  bother 
end  with  loss,  he  always  said,  and  Patricia  Kemball  was  no  ex- 
ception to  the  rule.  Wherefore  he  looked  to  her  aunt's  decease 
as  the  sponge  over  the  slate  where  her  name  stood  :  when  h« 
would  have  no  more  to  do  with  her.  What  else  might  remain 
rested  in  his  own  mind  only. 


420  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO.  LOVE?" 


CHAPTER  XXXVIIL 

WHAT  MILLTOWN   SAID. 

Mr.  Hamley  could  afford  to  be  philosophic  and  magnani- 
mous about  that  "  uncomfortable  young  person/'  as  he 
called  Patricia,  society  was  less  patient.  After  the  ex- 
citement too  of  the  fete  and  the  election,  and  the  odd  rumours 
that  were  afloat  concerning  many  things  and  people,  Milltov,  i 
wanted  something  special  in  which  to  interest  itself,  as  a  kind 
of  aftermath  of  gossip.  So  it  fastened  on  the  extraordinary 
state  of  things  existing  between  the  Hollies  and  Abbey  Holme, 
and  made  it  a  personal  matter  as  to  which  was  right  and  which 
was  wrong  ;  the  two  sides  quarrelling  fiercely  together.  The 
fact  was  people  could  not  make  it  out,  and  were  angry  in  con- 
sequence. Why  had  she  so  suddenly  left  her  aunt's  house, 
they  said,  speaking  of  Patricia,  and  taken  up  her  abode  with 
an  unmarried  man  of  no  nearer  kinship  than  Adam  1  Some  said 
it  was  infamous  in  Mrs.  Hamley  to  allow  it,  and  others  said 
it  was  shameless  in  the  young  lady  to  do  it.  To  be  sure, 
Henry  Fletcher  was  an  old  fogey,  and  there  was  a  sister  to 
stand  sponsor  for  the  girl  to  Mrs.  Grundy  ;  but  it  was  a  very 
odd  position  all  the  same.  And  when  people  talk  about  an  odd 
position  they  mean  something  wrong  in  the  background.  If  it 
is  a  woman  who  is  athwart  the  lines,  her  false  perspective  is 
sure  to  be  accounted  to  her  as  a  sin  ;-and  no  one  could  persuade 
the  Abbey  Holmeites  that  Patricia  was  not  a  good-for-nothing 
young  baggage  who  had  done  something  abominable  for  which 
she  had  been  justly  turned  out  of  doors.  But  what  a  wicked 
thing  of  those  Fletchers  to  take  her  in  and  countenance  her  as 
theydid  !  It  was  just  like  them  !  Look  at  the  servants  they 
had — that  Mary  Anne,  quite  an  improper  girl  ;  and  Alice 
Garth,  who  had  been  dismissed  from  Abbey  Holme  at  a  mo- 
ment's notice  ;  and  now  Miss  Kemball  !  It  seemed  as  if  a 
woman  need  only  go  wrong  and  be  disgraceful  to  ensure  their 
patronage  and  friendship,  and  it  was  really  shameful 


WHAT  MILLTOWN  SAID.  421 

So  the  Abbey  Holmeites  stormed,  and  the  partisans  of  the 
Hollies,  being  few  and  feeble,  were  for  the  most  part  discom- 
fited, having  only  vague  charity  to  go  upon  for  their  defence. 
And  this  never  does  much  good  in  a  local  slander. 

Mr.  Wells  too  had  been  a  little  incautious,  and  had  hinted 
at  some  things  and  told  others.  He  was  as  much  in  the  dark 
as  everybody  else  as  to  the  truth  of  that  forgery,  and  he  did 
not  believe  that  the  young  lady  had  done  it  herself.  But  he 
had  no  clue  to  her  accomplice;  and  at  all  events  it  was  too 
strange  a  secret  to  keep  entirely  to  himself.  People  are  for 
the  most  part  generous  with  strange  secrets  and  like  to  share 
their  wealth  with  their  neighbours,  and  Mr.  Wells  was  no  ex- 
ception to  the  rule  ;  though  he  was  a  good,  inoffensive  soul 
who  picked  up  caterpillars  and  small  frogs  from  the  dusty  roads 
and  put  them  into  the  moist  banks,  when  taking  his  evening 
rambles,  and  was  otherwise  meek  and  benevolent.  Still,  he 
told  more  than  he  should  about  that  hundred-pound  cheque, 
and  he  hinted  more  than  he  told.  Whence  it  came  to  pass 
that  Patricia's  name  got  more  and  more  into  the  public  mouth, 
and  that  people  were  beginning  to  regard  her  as  a  scandal  to 
the  place.  A  society  so  eminently  respectable  as  that  of  Mill- 
town  does  not  like  its  young  ladies  to  be  talked  of.  gEver  on 
the  look  out  for  causes  of  offence,  and  ever  in  the  mood  to 
imagine  what  it  does  not  find,  it  punishes  the  victims  it  creates. 
As  it  had  chosen  Patricia  for  its  present  victim  it  assumed  that 
she  must  have  been  guilty  of  something  bad  because  she  was 
being  talked  about.  It  is  a  circular  kind  of  logic  common  to 
nzrrrow  communities ;  and  the  Milltown  community  was  very 
narrow. 

At  last  some  one  took  heart  and  spoke  to  Miss  Fletcher 
seriously,  warning  her  against  her  guest  affectionately,  as  is  the 
way  with  people  when  they  have  put  on  their  armour  of  un- 
righteousness and  mean  mischief.  It  was  the  rector's  wife, 
Mrs.  Borrodaile — chosen  spokeswoman  by  the  rest  on  account 
of  her  official  position  which  gave  a  reflected  sanctity  to  her 
warnings — who  came  one  day  to  the  Hollies  and  begged  to  see 
Miss  Fletcher  alone.  She  hoped  she  did  not  offend  in  her  zeal, 
she  said  ;  but  was  she  quite  satisfied  with  her  young  friend  ? — 
quite  sure  that  she  was  all  she  seemed  to  be,  and  as  simple  and 
good  as  she  had  once  represented  her  ?  Strange  reports  were 


422  "  WHAT  \voru>  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

going  about  the  town  concerning  her.  There  was  some  dis- 
graceful mystery  connected  with  the  Bank  and  a  cheque  of 
•which  she,  Mis.  Borrodaile,  had  not  full  particulars ;  but  it  was 
something  very  dreadful,  and  she  knew  quite  enough  to  make 
her  uneasy.  She  was  a  very  odd  young  person  too  she  had 
heard  in  opinion ;  and  was  quite  a  freethinker  and  all  that ; 
with  queer  notions  about  morality,  and  the  most  objectionable 
habits — a  very  unsatisfactory  young  person  indeed,  and  one  to 
beware  of. 

So  the  good  lady  sat  and  talked,  and  stabbed  a  young  crea- 
ture's fair  fame  with  the  best  intentions  in  the  world  ;  think- 
ing she  was  performing  the  part  of  a  Christian  minister's  wife 
as  it  should  be  performed,  and  feeling  satisfied  that  her  matronly 
purity  and  propriety  were  justly  incensed  against  youthful 
iniquity. 

Catherine  Fletcher  smiled  while  Mrs.  Borrodaile  spoke ;  and 
her  smile,  though  genial  and  pleasant,  was  not  reassuring. 

"Yes,  I  know  all  the  story,"  she  said;  which  was  a  long 
shot  measured  by  facts  ;  "  and  I  know  that  Miss  Kemball  was 
used  most  shamefully  in  that  transaction — used  in  a  double 
sense,"  she  added  meaningly.  "  You  can  tell  me  nothing  new 
about  it,  Mrs.  Borrodaile." 

"  And  you  are  satisfied  you  know  the  truth  1 "  asked  that 
lady  emphatically.  "  I  am  very  fond  of  young  people,  as  you 
know,  dear  Miss  Fletcher  ;  but  I  am  bound  to  say  that  my  ex- 
perience of  girls  is  unfavourable.  They -are  generally  untruth- 
ful, and  I  would  not  trust  one  of  them." 

"  I,  on  the  contrary,  would  trust  most  of  them  greatly,  and 
Patricia  Kemball  entirely,"  said  Catherine. 

"  I  call  that  simply  offering  a  premium  to  deceit,""  Mrs.  Bor- 
rodaile answered. 

She  was  a  woman  who  held  fast  to  the  doctrine  of  inherent 
depravity,  and  considered  trust  in  one's  fellow-creatures  an 
heretical  doctrine  to  be  discouraged  like  Wesleyanism  or  Soci- 
nianism,  or  any  other  objectionable  weed  in  the  garden  of  ortho- 
doxy. 

"  I  think  if  you  knew  Patricia  you  would  not  say  this,"  was 
Miss  Fletcher's  answer.  "  I  never  knew  so  lovely  a  character, 
so  beautiful  a  nature." 

"  It  is  very  odd,"  said  Mrs.  Borrodaile  crisping  her  lips.    "  If 


WHAT  MILLTOWN  SAID  423 

she  is  so  charming  as  you  represent,  how  was  it  that  she  could 
not  get  on  with  Mrs.  Hamley  ?  I  am  sure  a  more  correct-minded 
woman  never  breathed  than  dear  Mrs.  Hamley  ;  and  we  can 
judge  for  ourselves  of  her  kindness  by  the  way  in  which  she 
has  brought  up  Miss  Drummond — a  no  nearer  connection  than 
her  husband's  cousin  I  If  Miss  Kemball  was  really  so  sweet,  I 
wonder  she  did  not  manage  to  make  things  pleasanter  for 
herself  at  Abbey  Holme  than  by  all  accounts  they  were." 

"  If  they  were  unpleasant,  of  which  I  have  no  doubt,  that 
does  not  prove  that  the  fault  was  Patricia's,"  said  Miss  Fletcher. 

"  Of  course  it  proves  nothing ;  but  the  supposition  would  be 
that  it  was.  And  at  all  events  it  is  pleasanter  to  believe  in 
one's  old  friends,  people  too  of  mature  age,  rather  than  in  a 
young  stranger  of  whom  one  knows  .nothing." 

"  I  think  it  is  pleasanter  to  believe  in  the  truth,"  said  Ca- 
therine simply,  and  Mrs.  Borrodaile  bridled. 

"  Well,"  she  said  rising,  "  it  is  of  course  no  business  of 
mine.  I  merely  thought  it  my  duty  to  warn  you,  and  to  let 
you  know  that  the  most  unpleasant  reports  are  going  about  the 
place  in  connection  with  Miss  Kemball.  This  horrid  Bank 
affair  for  one — her  ungovernable  temper,  so  that  her  poor  aunt 
could  not  possibly  put  up  with  her  for  another — her  loose  opi- 
nions, so  shocking  in  a  young  person  ! — and  then  this  ridiculous 
assertion  that  Lord  Merrian  made  her  an  offer  of  marriage, 
which  she  refused." 

"  I  hear  so  little  gossip  I  had  not  heard  that  before,"  said 
Catherine. 

"  Not  that  Lord  Merrian  proposed  ? "  cried  Mrs.  Borrodaile 
shrilly. 

"  No ;  not  a  syllable  of  it." 

"  Why  all  Milltown  is  ringing  with  it." 

"  Who  says  so  1 " 

"  Every  one." 

"  But  who  first  set  the  report  afloat,  I  mean  t  Patricia  did 
not,  I  am  sure," 

"  Oh  !  I  believe  Mr.  Hamley  first  mentioned  it.  I  wonder 
you  never  heard  it,  Miss  Fletcher  !  He  told  Mr.  Borrodaile 
before  the  fete  came  off— so  long  ago  as  that ;  and  said  that 
this  was  the  reason  why  Abbey  Holme  had  been  excluded  from 
the  list  of  invitations.  So  I  suppose  it^js  true.  At  least,  Miss 


424  "  "WH AT  VTOrLD  yOU  BO,  LOVE?" 

Kemball  mnst  have  made  them  believe  it."  This  was  said  with 
a  little  natural  feminine  spite  ;  for  Mrs.  Borrodaile  bad  nailed 
her  colours  to  the  mast  now,  and  was  determined  to  find  Pa- 
tricia tanlty  on  one  count  if  not  on  another. 

"  You  may  see  how  little  she  boasts  by  her  not  telling  me, 
her  nearest  friend,  that  she  had  had  such  a  flattering  offer," 
said  Catherine.  "She  never  gave  me  the  faintest  hint  of  any- 
thing of  the  kind;  so  she  did  .not  plume  herself  very  much  on 
her  conquest." 

"You  might  say  instead  how  insincere  she  is  not  to  have  con- 
fided in  you  ;  but  I  see  that  you  are  infatuated,  Miss  Fletcher, 
and  no  good  is  to  be  done  with  you.  However,  I  .have  performed 
my  duty,"  was  Mrs.  Borrodaile's  rejoinder,  as  she  shook  hands 
indigna.  ly,  more  than  evej  annoyed  with  Patricia  as  the  inno- 
cent cause  of  her  rebuff. 

Had  Catherine  Fletcher  been  more  skilful — say  as  skilful  as 
Dora — she  would  have  done  Patricia  more  good.  She  would 
have  agreed  with  Mrs.  Borrodaile  up  to  a  certain  point,  by 
which  she  would  have  asserted  her  own  sympathy  and  won  her 
informant's  respect.  This  would  have  put  the  envoy  of  Mill- 
town  morality  into  good  humour,  because  people  like  to  be 
successful  in  their  work  whatever  it  may  be — private  slander 
or  public  benefaction.  Then,  by  a  cleverly-dropped  word  here 
and  a  kindly  suggestion  there,  she  would  have  modified  some  of 
the  harsher  tints,  softened  some  of  the  broader  lines.  And  Mrs. 
Borrodaile  would  have  adopted  her  suggestions,  thinking  them 
her  own  original  impulses  of  charitable  judgment.  Tims  she 
would  -have  seemed  to  hold  with  the  righteousness  of  matronly 
indignation  while  sweetening  its  sour  doctrine  of  youthful  ini- 
quity ;  but  this  kind  of  thing  was  as  little  in  Catherine's  way 
as  Patricia's.  By  which  lie  too  failed  in  her  possibilities  in  a  so- 
ciety which  cares  mainl-  to  be  flattered  and  which  dislikes  to 
be  taught.  This  two-iaced  faculty  which  the  world  calls  tact, 
is  that  wherein  the  children  of  the  generation  are  stronger  than 
the  children  of  light,  and  wiser  in  the  way  of  work-a-day  policy. 

Without  a  line  of  deception  in  her  whole  character,  ^Patricia 
was  yet  not  a  girl  to  talk  of  herself,  or  to  tell  the  facts  of  her 
life  unasked.  She  had  but  few  to  tell,  indeed.  Her  uncle's 
death,  her  engagement  with  Gordon,  and  her  refusal  of  Lord 
Merrian,  were  the  three  most  important  items  in  her  inventory ; 


WHAT  MILLTOWN  SAID.  42&' 

but  as  she  had  never  been  asked  about  the  last  she  had  not 
spoken  of  it.  It  would  Lave  seemed  to  her  dishonourable  had 
she  done  so.  Of  Gordon  she  had  often  talked  ;  but  naturally  ; 
with  none  of  the  shyness,  the  blushing  consciousness,  which 
betrays  the  girl's  love-affair.  Had  he  been  her  brother  she  could 
not  have  spoken  of  him  with  more  open  affectionateness, 
more  confessed  pride.  It  was  this  very  openness  which  threw 
her  friends  off  the  track  ;  s<<  that  it  never  occurred  even  to  Ca- 
therine, w|io  had  the  woman's  keen  scent  in  such  matters,  that 
her  child,  as  she  called  Patricia,  was  engaged  in  the  formal 
manner  recognised  by  the  world.  And  Henry  Fletcher,  who 
had  heard  the  name  of  Gordon  Frere  even  less  frequently  than 
his  sister,  suspected  less  in  proportion. 

The  evening  of  Mrs.  Borrodaile's  visit  the  three  were  sitting 
in  the  drawing-room  alter  dinner,  when  Catherine,  looking  up 
from  her  book,  said  somewhat  suddenly  :  "  Patricia,  Mrs.  Bor- 
rodaile  has  been  telling  me  the  oddest  story  about  you  to-day  ! 
I  wonder  if  it  is  true  ? " 

There  were  never  any  secrets  at  the  Hollies ;  so  that  Cathe- 
rine's speaking  out  before  her  brother  was  neither  a  breach  of 
confidence  nor  an  embarrassment. 

"  A  story  about  me  ?  What  can  it  be  1 "  said  Patricia  meet- 
ing the  kind  smile  with  one  as  frank. 

"  It  is  about  Lord  Merrian." 

A  sudden  flush  that  made  her  face  flame  to  the  tips  of  her 
ears  was  Patricia's  first  answer  ;  her  second,  in  words,  was  the 
natural  inquiry  :  "  What  did  she  say  1  '\ 

"  That  Mr.  Hamley  has ,  been  telling  every  one  the  reason 
why  they  were  not  invited  at  the  Quest,  when  that  fete  was 
given,  was  because  Lord  Merrian  had  made  you  an  offer,  and 
you  had  refused  him." 

"  I  think  Mr.  Hamley  ought  to  hold  his  tongue,"  said  Pat- 
ricia indignantly. 

Dr.  Fletcher  looked  at  her  narrowly.  He  was  arranging  a 
microscopic  slide,  but  he  spoilt  his  object  and  had  to  begin 
again. 

"  Then  it  is  true  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Patricia.  "  But  I  think  it  very  dishonourable  of 
Mr.  Hamley  to  speak  about  it." 

"  You  refused  Lord  Merrian  I      It  was  a  brave  thing  to  do, 


426  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

child ! "  cried  Catherine  warmly,  her  mind  talcing  in  at  a 
glance  the  whole  situation,  with  the  pressure  that  must  have 
been  brought  to  bear  on  her. 

"  I  could  do  nothing  else,"  the  girl  answered ;  "  I  did  not 
love  him  ;  besides,  how  could  I,  with  Gordon  1  " 

Dr.  Fletcher  put  down  his  hands. 

"  What  has  Gordon  to  do  with  itl"  asked  Catherine  open- 
ing her  soft  brown  eyes. 

"  Everything,"  Patricia  answered  with  grave  simplicity. 
"Uncle  gave  me  to  him  the  night  before  he  died." 

There  was  a  pause  of  a  few  moments. 

"  I  did  not  know  you  were  engaged,"  then  said  Catherine, 
to  whom  the  information  had  come  rather  as  a  shock. 

"  No  ?  I  thought  you  did.  I  have  spoken  of  him  so  often  I 
thought  you  knew  everything,"  Patricia  answered. 

"  Not  so  much  as  I  do  now,"  said  Catherine  glancing  at  her 
brother.  "  I  had  no  idea  that  our  country  lassie  had  been  a  po- 
tential countess,  or  that  we  were  some  day  to  lose  her." 

"  Oh,  as  for  losing  me,  you  will  not  do  that  for  along  time  !  " 
said  Patricia  innocently.  "  Gordon  will  not  come  home  for 
another  year  at  the  earliest — perhaps  not  for  five.  It  all  de- 
pends on  the  Admiralty  ;  and  no  one  ever  knows  what  their 
orders  will  be."  She  looked  up  wistfully.  "  The  time  seems 
long  when  I  think  of  it."  she  added.  "  I  should  so  like  to  see 
him  again  !  But  it  does  no  good  to  grumble,  and  I  would  rather 
he  did  his  duty  to  the  service  if  I  did  not  see  him  for  twenty 
years,  than  shirk  his  work  and  come  home  to  me." 

"  That's  the  right  spirit,  dear  love,"  said  Catharine.  "  Is  it 
not,  Henry  ? " 

"  Surely,"  said  Dr.  Fletcher  rather  slowly. 

He  had  taken  no  part  in  the  conversation ;  but  this  was  not 
extraordinary.  He  was  a  silent  man  by  nature,  and  it  amused 
liim  to  hear  his  sister  and  her  young  friend  talk,  as  they  did, 
every  ^evening  on  all  sorts  of  subjects,  while  he  sat  by,  generally 
occupied  with  his  microscope  and  listening  to  what  they  said 
in  between  his  graver  observations  and  the  notes  made  thereon. 
But  though  he  was  silent,  he  had  become  very  pale  during  these 
last  sentences  ;  a  kind  of  greyness  had  stolen  over  his  face  that 
startled  his  sister  when  she  looked  at  him.  It  was  only  a 
change  of  colour  and  expression.  His  manner  was  the  same  as 


WHAT  MILLTOWN  SAID.  4J7 

ever,  quiet,  tranquil,  self-possessed.  And  when  he  called  Pat- 
ricia to  come  and  see  the  little  shell  he  had  at  last  fixed  for 
her  conveniently,  not  the  keenest  watcher  could  have  detected 
a  shade  of  difference  in  his  tone  or  hearing.  Unless  indeed,  it 
had  been  that  he  was  more  tender  to  her  than  usual. 

So  the  evening  passed,  and  the  conversation  after  a  time 
drifted  into  other  topics;  but  not  before  Patricia,  the  icebi-ing 
now  broken,  gave  as  circumstantial  an  account  of  all  mattei •••?  as 
she  could,  which  showed  the  springs  of  Mrs.  Hamley's  conduct 
in  a  clearer  light,  if  not  a  fairer.  To  have  been  implicated  in 
a  crime  of  which  she  would  not  betray  the  real  offender,  and  to 
have  refused  a  viscount,  were  both  together  reasons  sufficiently 
strong  to  account  for  any  amount  of  reprobation  from  a  woman 
oi  her  nature  ;  and  neither  Catherine  nor  her  brother  wondered 
now  at  Mrs.  Hamley's  practical  desertion  of  her  niece — "  a  loss 
by  which  we  have  made  our  gain,"  said  Demeter  lovingly, 
when  Patricia  had  gone  to  bed. 

And  Henry  Fletcher  assented  and  said,  "  yes,  indeed,"  with- 
out looking  up  from  his  work.  How  that  evening's  conversa- 
tion affected  him,  or  if  it  affected  him  at  all,  no  one  ever  knew; 
not  even  Catherine,  his  confidante  and  favourite  friend.  He 
was  not  of  the  kind  to  wear  his  heart  on  his  sleeve  for  daw  or 
dove  ;  nor  yet  of  the  kind  to  nourish  impossible  desires  or  un- 
availing regrets.  Whether  lie  had  hoped  that  P.i'.  i  iciaKemball 
would  have  remained  with  them  for  ever  as  their  daughter  and 
delight,  or  whether  he  had  hoped  for  a  still  nearer  and  dearer 
love,  who  can  say  1  And  was  it  only  a  coincidence,  the  degra- 
dation of  health  which  followed  so  soon  on  this  conversation  t 
No  one  knew. 

All  that  any  one  could  say  or  see  was  that  Dr.  Fletcher  was  look- 
ing very  ill,  and  had  grown  quite  an  old  man  lately.  His  hair 
was  greyer,  his  leathery  brown  face  more  marked  and  puckered, 
his  mild  kind  eyes  more  mournful  than  of  old  ;  and  these  had 
always  been  his  characteristics.  But  as  he  did  not  complain  no 
one  took  much  heed  of  him.  They  supposed  he  had  been 
poisoning  himself  with  some  of  his  abominable  chemicals,  or 
chilling  his  poor  thin  blood  by  star  gazing  when  he  ought  to  be 
in  bed  and  asleep,  like  a  rational  Christian  gentleman.  And  if 
he  was  ill  he  had  brought  it  on  himself,  they  concluded  ;  so 
shut  up  their  hoard  of  compassion  for  some  better  occasion — 


428  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?  " 

such  as  poor  Colonel  Lowe's  embarrassments  which  Mr.  Hamley 
took  care  should  now  be  public  property,  and  the  pity  it  would 
be  if  Cragfoot  was  obliged  to  be  sold.  For  though  Milltown 
was  content  to 'have  a  self-made  Colossus  bestriding  their  town, 
it  did  not  quite  like  to  see  the  huge  splay  foot  set  down  on  one 
of  their  real  gentry.  That  huge  splay  foot  might  crush  the 
Garths  of  humanity,  as  many  as  it  would,  but  society  itself  was 
interested  in  the  Nemesis  overtaking  a  spendthrift  born  in  the 
local  purple.  Society  was  just  now  full  of  poor  Colonel  Lowe 
whose  house  was  tumbling  about  his  ears  ;  so  that  between  him 
and  Patricia  Kemball  the  Milltown  hoppers  were  full  fed  with 
grist,  and  tea-party  tongues  wagged  merrily. 

They  wagged  still  more  when  it  became  known  that  young 
Sydney  was  engaged  to  Miss  Manley,  who  had  a'hundred  thou- 
sand pounds  at  least  for  her  fortune  ;  and  they  all  said  it  was 
the  most  barefaced  thing  of 'its  kind  they  had  ever  known.  In 
this  perhaps,  they  were  not  so  far  out ;  for  the  fact  of  an  un- 
personable  young  woman  with  a  large  fortune  being  demanded 
in  marriage  by  a  man  of  somewhat  mildewed  name,  when  the 
ruin  of  his  house  had  just  been  made  public,  carries  a  doubtful 
look  with  it  somehow,  and  seems  to  justify  unfriendly  comment. 

Not  that  either  father  or  son  cared  for  what  was  said  of 
them,  so  long  as  they  touched  the  material  advantages  for  which 
they  sold  themselves.  When,  years  ago,  Colonel  Lowe  had 
married  Lady  Anne  Grahame's  daughter,  and  had  married  her 
without  settlements  and  against  the  wishes  of  her  clearer-sighted 
friends,  the  world  had  made  pretty  free  with  the  gallant  young 
officer's  assumed  motives  ;  but  the  Colonel  came  in  for  the  Crag- 
foot  estate,  and  let  the  world  play  at  ninepins  with  his  motives 
as  it  liked.  And  now  when  his  son  was  treading  in  his  steps 
the  same  kind  of  disfavour  was  repeated.  They  only  hoped 
however,  that  Miss  Manley  would  be  advised  by  those  who 
knew,  and  have  her  fortune  settled  on  herself.  She  had  warn- 
ing enough  in  her  poor  mother-in-law  that  was  to  be,  they  said, 
who  had  married  in  that  irrational  trust  which  possesses  weak 
and  loving  women.  The  handsome  young  officer  full  of  fervour 
and  very  much  in  debt,  with  a  halo  of  Crimean  glory  round  his 
.curly  head,  was  more  to  be  believed,  she  thought,  than  her  staid 
old  tiresome  friends  who  drew  gloomy  pictures,  and  wanted  to 
have  no  end  of  legal  straps  and  backstays.  She  did  not  accept 


WHAT  MILLTOWN  SAID.  429 

their  gloomy  pictures  as  in  any  way  applicable  to  her.  Men 
had  married  for  money  and  ill-treated  their  wives  afterwards, 
she  acknowledged ;  of  course  they  had  ;  and  would  again ;  but 
Charles  was  an  exception  ;  and  it  was  absurd,  she  argued,  to 
give  herself  to  a  man  she  could  not  trust  with  her  property. 
In  giving  herself  she  entrusted  him  with  something  far  more 
precious  than  Cragfoot ;  so  the  two  might  well  go  together, 
and  the  estate  follow  her  happiness.  Wherefore  the  marriage 
was  celebrated  according  to  their  joint  wishes ;  and  Lady  Anne 
Grahame's  well-endowed  daughter  gave  herself  in  haste  and  had 
repented  for  a  lifetime  at  leisure. 

And  now  the  same  thing  was  going  to  be  repeated  with 
Sydney  and  Julia  Manley  in  that  odd  way  in  which  events 
double  themselves  in  certain  families.  Miss  Manley  was  as 
much  in  love  with  the  son  as  Miss  Grahame  had  been  with  the 
father,  and  the  ravens  of  ill-boding  croaked  their  ugly  prophe- 
cies in  vain.  She  only  desired  to  show  her  lover  how  much 
she'  believed  in  him  and  loved  him  ;  and  the  resolve  of  a  weak 
woman  for  love  or  spite  is  for  the  most  part  unalterable. 

Milltown  was  all  agog  with  the  news  ;  but  aghast  too  ;  for 
poor  Miss  Manley  was  liked  well  enough  in  the  place,  and  Syd- 
ney was,  as  we  know,  distrusted. 

Mr.  Hamley  came  home  one  evening  full  of  the  report.  He 
waited  until  he  had  drunk  his  prescribed  amount  of  claret 
before  joining  the  ladies,  and  then  he  began. 

"  Well,  Dora,  that  precious  lover  of  yours  has  not  been  long 
before  he  has  given  you  a  successor,"  he  said,  planting  himself 
on  the  hearthrug,  and  speaking  with  a  kind  of  contemptuous 
jocularity,  which  was  not  his  most  becoming  manner. 

"  What  do  you  mean,  Mr.  Hamley  ?  "  answered  Dora  inno- 
cently. 

"  That  precious  scamp,  that  young  Lowe,  has  engaged  him- 
self to  Miss  Manley  ;  and  the  fool  is  going  to  marry  him." 

"  Indeed ! "  cried  Dora,  who  just  then  dropped  her  book 
and  had  to  stoop  rather  a  long  time  before  she  could  pick  it  up 
again. 

"  Yes,  I  think  it  is,  indeed  !  when  such  shamelessness  takes 
place  before  one's  eyes.  '  He  has  taken  her  for  her  money,  that's 
as  plain  as  the  nose  on  one's  face  ;  and  that's  why  he  wanted 
you,"  was  Mr.  Hamley's  answer. 


430  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE? " 

"  You  are  not  very  complimentary,  Mr.  Hamley,"  .said  his 
wife.  "  1  had  no  more  wish  that  Dora  should  be  his  wife  than 
you  had,  but  I  would  not  say  so  rudely  as  you  do  that  he 
wanted  her  only  for  her  dower.  Dora  and  Julia  Manley  are 
not  very  much  alike,  I  think  !  " 

"  You  dear !  "  purred  Dora.  "  You  are  always  so  good  to 
me  !  But  Miss  Manley  is  a  great  deal  better  than  I  am,  and 
perhaps  Sy — ,  Mr.  Lowe,  does  really  like  her." 

Let  those  explain  the  contradictions  of  human  nature  who 
can.  Dora  did  not  want  to  go  away  with  Sydney,  and  she  was 
sorry  for  his  distresses ;  she  did  not  want  to  share  his  poverty, 
nor  indeed  did  she  wish  him  to  be  poor  at  all  ;  she  repented 
her  own  marriage  with  him  ;  she  was  even  ashamed  of  it  now 
that  the  first  excitement  had  worn  off  and  she  had  realized  the 
difficulties  and  dangers  of  her  position  ;  yet  with  all  this,  when 
she  heard  that  Sydney  Lowe  was  really  engaged  to  Julia  Man- 
ley,  she  was  almost  choked,  partly  with  rage  and  partly  with 
tears,  and  could  scarcely  command  herself  to  speak  in  her 
usual  tone  and  manner.  Nothing  but  the  deadly  fear  of  discov- 
ery, with  Mr.  Hamley's  small  keen  eyes  watching  her  so  nar- 
nowly,  could  have  nerved  her  for  her  part  ;  but  power  cornea 
when  it  is  needed,  as  it  came  to  her  now  in  calmness  and  seli- 
control. 

"  I  grant  all  that,  Lady,"  Mr.  Hamley  answered.  "  I  am 
not  fool  enough  to  place  such  a  cart-horse  as  that  Manley 
woman  and  our  little  Arab  here  in  the  same  harness  ;  but  it 
looks  fishy  all  the  same " 

"  It  looks  what,  Mr.  Haraley  I "  interrupted  the  slow,  severe 
voice  of  the  wifely  critic. 

He  laughed,  and  shifted  his  feet  noisily. 

"  A  lapse,  Lady,  a  lapse,"  he  said.  "  Well,  then,  it  looks 
doubtful  when  a  young  man  pretends  to  be  broken-hearted  for 
Dora  one  day  and  makes  up  to  Miss  Manley  the  next.  It  looka 
more  like  money-bags  than  love,  I  must  say.  For  my  part," 
with  an  assumption  of  patriarchal  experience,  "I  cannot  under- 
stand the  young  fellows  of  the  present  day.  I  am  a  man  as 
doesn't  change  myself,  either  in  my  admiration  for  the  ladies, 
or  in  my  sentiments  elsewheres.  The  lady  as  I  have  loved  once 
I  should  for  always,  and  I  don't  understand  this  game  of  skip- 
jack— one  do\vn  and  another  up  before  you  can  say  Jackftobin- 
sou.  I  think  that's  the  way  to  do,  isn't  it,  Lady  1 " 


WHAT  MILLTOWN  SAID.  431 

He  spoke  to  his  wife  but  he  looked  at  Dora;  and  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley  smiled  and  said  yes,  she  approved  of  his  fidelity.  It  was 
one  of  the  virtues  she  always  had  admired  in  him,  and  she 
hoped  she  should  have  reason  to  admire  it  to  the  end. 

Not  much  more  was  sard  at  the  time  of  this  projected  mar- 
riage, and  Dora  escaped  the  detection  of  her  secret  with  her 
usual  cleverness ;  but  when  Patricia  heard  of  it,  she  startled 
the  Fletchers  by  a  curious  outburst  of  anguish  and  terror,  which 
they  had  some  difficulty  in  calming.  She  would  not  say  why 
the  news  so  powerfully  affected  her ;  not  even  to  Catherine, 
from  whom  she  had  not  a  thought  unshared.  She  only  looked 
white  and  scared,  and  said,  "  No,  no,  it  ought  not  to  be,"  and 
"  it  must  not  be,"  weeping  hot  heavy  tears,  and  falling  back 
again  into  her  old  position  of  self-torture — not  knowing 
whether  to  tell  what  we  know  and  so  prevent  further  evil,  is 
the  right  thing  to  do,  or  to  keep  silence  in  the  presence  of  sin. 
and  by  silence  to  consent  with  sinners,  may  not  be  at  times  the 
truest  good.  Catherine  comforted  her  as  well  as  she  was  able, 
but  she  could  not  console  her  entirely ;  for,  to  which  side  soever 
she  turned,  she  found  grief  and  perplexity  and  one  form  of  mo- 
ral evil.  Do  what  she  would  she  could  not  keep  herself  pure 
nor  hold  her  action  harmless. 

While  she  was  sitting  there  doing  her  beat  to  face  her  diffi- 
culties bravely,  the  Hamley  carriage  dashed  up  to  the  door,  and 
a  note  was  brought  in  to  her  from  Mr.  Hamley  desiring  her  in- 
stant presence  at  Abbey  Holme.  Mrs.  Hamley  was  ill.  Had 
it  then  come  at  last  1  Patricia  thought,  as  with  trembling 
hands  she  threw  on  her  hat  and  jacket.  Had  her  aunt  discov- 
ered the  whole  thing,  and  was  she  to  be  assoiled  and  reinstat- 
ed?— taken  back  to  favour,  and  perhaps  taken  back  to  the 
house  ?  she  would  be  glad  of  the  former ;  but  the  latter  ? 

As  she  turned  to  go  she  threw  her  arms  round  Catherine  with 
a  feverish  grasp. 

"  Whatever  happens  we  are  always  friends  together,  as  we  are 
now  ?  "  she  whispered.  "  You  will  not  give  me  back  to  them  1 " 

"No,"  said  Catherine  kissing  her  fondly;  "you  shall  not  go 
back  to  Abbey  Holme,  my  love,  save  at  your  own  desire." 

"Then  that  will  be  never!"  cried  Patricia  with  a  shudder,  as 
she  got  into  the  carriage  and  was  borne  away — borne  away  to  this 
house  of  falsehood  and  fair-seeming, where  nothing  was  as  it  look- 
ed, and  where  evil  was  accepted  for  good  and  deception  for  truth. 


432  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 


CHAPTER  XXXIX, 

THE  LAST  LOOK. 

RS.  HAMLEY'S  health  had  long  been  declining.  She 
was  one  of  those  lean  and  ascetic  women  who,  with  a 
cordon  bleu  in  the  kitchen  and  all  sorts  of  coraetic  vin- 
tages in  the  cellar,  eat  dry  toast  for  breakfast  and  drink  plain 
water  for  dinner.  She  gave  one  the  impression  of  being  only 
half-nourished  and  always  insufficiently  clad  ;  a  woman  to  whom 
the  senses  were  things  accursed,  and  who  kept  her  luxurious 
table  and  wore  her  magnificent  clothes  as  matters  due  to  her 
position  rather  than  as  personal  indulgences  in  which  she  took 
pleasure-obligations  for  the  pride  of  life,  not  delights  for  the  lust 
of  the  flesh. 

This  last  year  had  tried  her  severely.  Ever  since  Patricia's 
arrival  she  had  been  more  or  less  disturbed  in  mind,  and  her 
frail  body  had  suffered  in  consequence.  The  last  three  weeks 
had  put  the  c  jping-stone  to  her  troubles.  That  her  niece  should 
De  implicated  in  a  crime  which  she  refused  to  confess,  that  she 
should  have  thrust  aside  the  providential  settlement  offered  to 
her,  and  lastly,  that  she  should  have  preferred  the  Hollies  to 
Abbey  Holme,  and  Catherine  and  Henry  Fletcher  to  herself  and 
her  husband — all  this  was  too  much  for  her.  Add  to  this  the 
excitement  consequent  on  her  husband's  election  ;  the  breakfasts 
she  had  to  give,  the  luncheons,  the  dinners,  at  which  she  must 
preside  ;  the  uproar  and  confusion  introduced  into  her  well-or- 
dered household  ;  the  bodily  fatigue  and  mental  excitement  she 
had  to  undergo  ;  and  it  was  small  wonder  if,  lying  awake  all 
night  and  fretting  all  day,  now  resenting  Patricia's  absence  from 
their  unusual  festivities,  now  resenting  those  festivities  them- 
selves, exhausted  and  feverish,  her  health  went  down  as  Mr. 
Hamley  said  "  with  a  run."  Her  scanty  bit  of  dry  toast  grew 
smaller  at  each  breakfast,  her  temper  more  uncertain.  She  was 
evidently  very  ill  and  profoundly  wretched :  but  she  would  not 
allow  them  to  send  for  Dr.  Wickham,  nor  would  she  recall  Pat- 


THE  LAST  LOOK.  433 

ricia.  She  would  own  to  nothing  but  fatigue  and  the  east  wind ; 
and  had  it  not  been  for  dear  Dora,  she  used  to  say,  she  did  not 
know  how  she  should  have  survived  either. 

Dear  Dora  was  everything  to  her.  In  truth,  the  girl  was 
sorry  to  see  her  suffer,  and  desperately  frightened  lest  she 
should  die.  Her  death  would  indeed  be  shooting  Niagara,  with 
that  terrible  "  and  after  1 "  to  follow.  She  was  perfectly  aware 
of  the  contingency  it  included ;  indeed  she  had  known  it  for 
years  ;  and  though  she  had  encouraged  it  when  it  suited  her 
purpose,  the  knowledge  of  what  had  to  come  when  Mrs.  Ham- 
ley's  death  should  leave  Mr.  Hamley  free,  had  perhaps  had 
something  to  do  with  the  ceremony  in  which  Mr.  Sydney  Lowe 
had  been  the  principal  performer  mbre  than  a  year  ago  behind 
the  New  Road  caryatides.  But  though  Mrs.  Hamley's  death 
would  always  have  been  a  terror  and  a  trouble,  it  was  doubly 
so  now  when  Sydney's  engagement  with  Miss  Manley  was 
made  public,  and  she  could  not  claim  even  such  slight  protec- 
tion as  a  confession  of  her  love  for  him  might  have  given. 
Would  she  have  had  courage  for  that,  had  she  been  able  1  Look 
where  she  would  the  waters  were  closing  rapidly  round  her, 
and  she  saw  no  way  of  escape  to  the  right  or  to  the  left. 

Pear  Dora  was  intensely  unhappy  at  this  time  ;  terrified  and 
distracted ;  and  her  own  secret  sorrows  gave  her  such  a  de- 
lightful appearance  of  sympathy — as  much  from  an  instinct  of 
self-preservation  as  from  her  natural  amiability  she  attended  oa 
Mrs.  Hamley  with  such  unremitting  care,  so  deliciously  unob- 
trusive yet  so  full  of  thought  and  charming  management — that, 
with  the  propensity  there  is  in  human  nature  to  round  off 
characters  harmoniously  and  to  find  velvet  coats  without  seamy 
sides,  no  one  who  had  seen  her  at  this  time  would  have  believed 
that  a  girl,  so  sweet  and  full  of  thought  for  her  dying  friend, 
was  able  at  the  same  time  to  be  so  false  and  base. 

Day  by  day  Mrs.  Hamley  had  grown  worse  and  drawn  nearer 
and  nearer  to  the  Great  Hour.  She  had  no  perceptible  ailment 
that  could  be  catalogued.  Weakness,  loss  of  appetite,  loss  of 
sleep,  frequent  faintings,  a  gradual  decay — that  long  slow  death 
of  which  the  stages  are  so  many  before  the  last  is  reached,  and 
passed — these  were  the  symptoms  and  the  root  of  her  malady. 
There  was  nothing  special  to  combat  in  all  this.  The  machine 
was  wearing  out ;  that  was  all;  and  she  knew  it.  She  had  a 
BB 


434  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

tough  spirit  and  had  always  made  a  good  fight  of  it.  In  poverty 
of  circumstances  as  in  distress  of  mind  she  never  showed  what 
she  suffered,  save  by  increased  acerbity  of  temper.  She  was 
peevish  in  affliction,  but  she  was  grim  and  determined.  Even 
now  she  had  not  given  up  till  forced  to  do  so.  She  had  come 
down  punctually  to  breakfast,  and  read  the  prayers  in  her 
quavering  treble,  though  she  was  obliged  to  yield  so  far  to  her 
weakness  as  to  sit  during  the  office.  She  had  poured  out  the 
tea  to  the  last  with  her  frail  and  shaking  hands  that  could 
scarcely  lift  the  massive  silver  pot,  both  together ;  and  she  had 
had  her  poor  old  face  and  head  dressed  with  her  usual  care  and 
precision.  It  was  painful  to  see  the  unnecessary  struggle  that 
she  made.  If  only  she  would  have  consented  to  her  state,  and 
been  a  comfortable  unpowdered  and  unsightly  goody  wrapped 
up  in  flannel  without  beads  or  bugles,  lace  or  ribbons  about 
her,  how  much  better  it  would  have  been,  dear  Dora  used  to 
think  ;  while  she  said  sweetly,  to  please  her :  "  What  a  pretty 
cap  that  is,  dear !  Bignold  certainly  knows  how  to  make 
caps." 

At  which  Mrs.  Hamley  would  smile  complacently,  and  think 
she  was  masking  her  batteries  and  fading  cleverly. 

And  all  this  time  she  was  fretting  about  Patricia.  Too 
proud  to  yield  to  her  inward  wish  for  a  reconciliation,  or  to 
write  telling  her  to  come  and  see  her,  she  was  angry  that  the 
girl  whom  she  had  repulsed  BO  severely  did  not  again  beg  for 
grace,  divining  the  moment  when  it  would  be  granted. 

"  She  must  know  that  I  am  ill,"  she  used  to  think,  half  be- 
tween tears  and  anger.  "  My  own  flesh  and  blood — my  only 
relation  to  whom  I  have  been  so  kind,  a  very  mother — to  treat 
me  with  such  ingratitude,  such  heartlessneas !  It  ia  her  evil 
conscience.  She  knows  that  she  has  sinned,  and  she  is  ashamed 
and  afraid  to  see  me." 

So  she  thought,  lying  awake  during  the  long  watches  of  the 
night,  tossed  between  her  secret  consciousness  of  Patricia's  in- 
nocence and  her  determination  to  find  her  guilty  for  her  own 
self-justification;  growing  weaker  day  by  day;  more  harassed 
night  by  night ;  till  at  last  the  moment  came  when  her  will 
had  to  go  down  before  disease,  and  when  she  must  perforce 
keep  the  bed  from  which  she  could  not  rise. 

Then,  and  not  till  then,  she  desired  that  Patricia  should  be 


THE  LAST  LOOK.  435 

sent  for ;  she  not  having  heard  cf  her  illness,  and  to  whom  Mr. 
Hamley's  hurried  note :  "  Miss  Kemball,  return  with  the  car- 
riage if  you  please ;  Mrs.  Hamley  is  ill  and  desires  to  see  you," 
was  scarcely  sufficient  preparation  for  the  terrible  change  she 
found. 

Propped  up  in  bed,  her  hair  restorers,  pads  and  braids,  laid 
aside  with  her  smart  dress-caps,  and  her  scanty  whitened  locks 
pushed  off  from  her  pinched  and  sallow  face  ;  her  eyes  sunk  in 
her  head  ;  her  thin  lips,  black  and  dry,  drawn  back  from  her 
teeth  ;  her  body  wasted  ;  and  her  hands  idly  plucking  at  the 
sheet — Patricia,  suddenly  ushered  into  the  presence  of  her  aunt 
— into  the  presence  of  death — could  not  at  first  realize  what  she 
saw.  It  was  like  something  unreal ;  a  picture,  or  a  dream. 
She  could  scarcely  believe  that  that  formidable  power  of  whom 
she  had  been  so  often  afraid  should  be  lying  there,  a  poor  weak 
helpless  thing  appealing  only  to  human  pity  and  dependent  on 
compassion  for  every  act  of  her  life  ;  her  arbitrary  will  set 
aside  ;  her  autocratic  power  gone  ;  nothing  left  now  but  the 
bare  bones  of  humanity.  It  was  very  terrible  to  her ;  a  sudden 
reversion  of  conditions — she  so  strong,  and  her  aunt  who  had 
mastered  her  so  weak — that  made  her  feel  almost  cruel  and  un- 
dutiful. 

She  could  not  repress  »  grievous  little  cry  as  she  came  up 
to  the  bed,  and  took  the  wasted  hand  that  moved  feebiy  across 
the  sheet  towards  her,  saying  as  she  carried  it  to  her  *ip»,  "  I 
did  not  know  that  you  were  ill,  darling  aunty ;  no  one  told  me 
till  this  moment." 

"I  thought  you  might  have  come  to  see  me,  Patricia,"  said 
Mrs.  Hamley  with  feeble  reproach. 

•'  If  I  had  only  known  that  I  might,  I  would  not  hare  waited 
to  be  sent'for,"  she  answered  tenderly. 

The  dying  woman  looked  up. 

"  In  spite  then,  of  your  wickedness,  you  feel  that  you  owe 
me  some  respect  ?  "  she  said. 

Had  she  been  in  her  ordinaiy  state  her  severity  of  accent 
would  have  chilled  and  checked  Patricia  ;  now  her  assumption 
of  moral  superiority  was  almost  tragical  from  its  impotence. 

"  I  only  wanted  to  love  you  with  my  whole  heart.  Oh,  let 
me  hear  \  .  i  say  that  you  believe  me  !"  Patricia  said  earnestly, 
her  honest  eyes  full  of  tears. 


436  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  I  dare  say  you  did,"  Mrs.  Hamley  answered  after  a  pause  ; 
"  I  did  not  see  it,  but  T  am  willing  to  believe  it — now." 

"  I  never  meant  to  offend  you,  aunty  dear,  at  any  time.  I 
have  been  ignorant  and  clumsy,  I  know  ;  but  I  always  wished 
to  do  what  was  right,"  said  the  girl  kissing  her  hand. 

""But  you  did  what  was  wrong  instead,"  Mrs.  Hamley  an- 
swered, looking  up  with  that  strange  and  awful  death-bed  scowl 
which  seems  more  like  demoniacal  possession  than  human 
anger. 

Patricia  shivered  as  she  met  her  look,  and  shut  her  eyes  for 
an  instant ;  then,  as  if  she  put  it  from  her,  she  said  : 

"  Yet  indeed  I  tried  hard  to  satisfy  you,  dear,  though  I 
failed." 

"  Yes,'  you  failed — you  failed,"  repeated  Mrs.  Hamley,  half 
closing  her  eyes. 

"  I  know  I  did,  to  my  bitter  sorrow  ;  and  I  never  understood 
how  nor  why,"  returned  Patricia,  bending  over  her  with  an 
earnest  caressing  gesture,  as  if  she  would  have  taken  the  poor 
sick  head  to  her  bosom,  and  given  some  of  the  fulness  of  her 
own  life  to  the  fast-ebbing  stream  pulsing  each  moment  more 
faintly  in  those  shrivelled  veins. 

"  If  you  are  sincere  in  saying  that,  tell  me  the  truth  about 
the  cheque,"  cried  Mrs.  Hamley  suddenly,  with  a  quick  flam- 
ing up  of  her  old  angry  tenacity. 

Patricia  looked  across  the  bed  to  where  Dora  stood,  dis- 
tressed truly,  but  self-possessed  and  fully  alive  to  the  danger 
of  the  moment.  She  had  not  braved  all  the  perils  which  had 
surrounded  her  for  so  many  months  to  yield  now  to  an  impulse 
of  weak  compassion  or  puerile  conscience.  She  was  sorry  for 
both  Mrs.  Hamley  and  Patricia,  but  she  would  be  more  sorry 
for  herself  if  things  were  different.  Hard  as  it  was  on  both 
that  the  one  should  die  deceived,  and  the  other  be  condemned 
while  innocent,  it  would  be  harder  she  thought,  on  herself,  if 
the  mask  which  she  had  worn  with  such  success  should  be 
taken  off  now  at  the  last  moment,  and  the  labour  of  a  life  be 
undone. 

"  Dora,  help  me  ! "  cried  Patricia  in  an  imploring  tone. 

Dora  looked  at  her  steadily. 

"  I  cannot  help  you,  Patricia,"  she  answered.  "  I  know 
nothing  about  it — you  know  that  I  do  not,"  emphatically. 


THE  LAST  LOOK.  437 

Patricia  covered  her  face.  It  took  all  her  strength  and 
loyalty  to  stand  up  against  the  agony  of  this  moment,  to  bear 
Uiis  terrible  burden.  That  her  aunt  should  die  believing  this 
grievous  falsehood  true,  believing  Dora  pure,  and  ignorant  of 
the  awful  chapterof  further  crime  contemplated  and  announced, 
was  of  itself  sorrow  enough  for  a  sincere  nature ;  but  also,  un- 
selfish as  she  was,  it  did  seem  hard  that  she  should  be  forced 
to  sacrifice  the  appearance  of  honour — the  thing  which  was 
dearest  to  her  in  lite — for  the  reality,  in  maintaining  the  false 
repute  of  another. 

The  dying  woman  plucked  her  feebly  by  the  sleeve 

"  Tell  me,"  she  said.  "  Why  do  you  trouble  Dora  about 
it?" 

Patricia  lifted  ap  her  face,  pale,  quivering,  but  steadfast. 

"  I  cannt»t  tell  you  aunt,"  she  said  in  low  distinct  tones  "I 
have  promised  faithfully  that  I  never  would,  and  I  have  not  got 
leave  to  break  my  word.  Only  believe  that  I  was  innocent  in 
the  whole  matter — oh  believe  that,  dear,  for  it  is  true  ! " 

Her  aunt  gave  a  pathetic  little  sigh.  She  was  too  weaiy,  too 
weak  to  combat  longer.  She  must  resign  herself  to  defeat. 
Undutiiul  and  self-willed  even  at  this  supreme  moment,  she  must 
leave  that  stubborn  spirit  now  to  its  own  hard  course.  She  had 
done  all  she  could ;  and  life  was  fading  too  fast  for  struggle. 

She  turned  her  wan  eyes  to  Dora.  It  was  rest  to  her  to  look 
at  the  soft-flower-face  she  knew  so  well  and  loved  so  dearly ' — 
the  face  that  had  been,  to  her  fancy  and  belief,  like  an  open 
book  of  which  she  had  read  every  page  from  end  to  end  !  It  was 
her  haven,  her  comtort ,  and  yet,  with  the  natural  sense  of  fam- 
ily, she  regretted  even  in  this  her  last  hour  that  her  own  niece 
had  not  been  as  dear  and  good  as  her  husband's  cousin,  and  had 
not  been  able  to  at  least  share  in  the  love  she  gave  so  Ireely  to 
this. 

"  God  bless  you,  my  child  ! "  she  said  in  the  gasping,  inter- 
rupted utterance  of  the  dying.  "  You  have  been  my  comfort 
ever  since  you  entered  the  house.  You  have  made  me  happy." 

"  1  have  loved  you,  dear,"  said  Dora,  laying  her  soft  hand  on- 
the  fleshless  fingers. 

Mrs.  Hamley  smiled  faintly.  "Take  care  of  her,  Mr.  Ham- 
ley,"  she  said ;  for  Mr.  Hamley  had  just  entered  by  a  side  door, 
$nd  now  stood  by  Dora. 


«  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

"  I  will,  my  dear — I  will,"  he  answered  fervently,  and  put 
his  arm  round  his  young  cousin's  slight  figure,  drawing  her  close 
to  his  ample  chest. 

"She  deserves  your  fatherly  care,"  said  Mrs.  Hatnley.  "I 
leave  her  to  you.  God  bless  her  !  God  bless  you,  Dora  ! " 

Dora  sobbed,  and  Mr.  Hamley  pressed  her  to  him  tenderly. 
Tears  were  in  his  eyes  too.  The  woman  who  was  dying  there 
before  him  had  been  his  true  friend,  if  never  his  beloved.  Though 
she  was  leaving  the  way  open  for  the  happiness  he  had  waited 
for  so  patiently  and  defended  so  jealously,  still  she  had  been 
staunch  and  loyal  in  her  day.  And  then  his  very  f^nderness 
for  Dora  made  him  pitiful  for  his  wife,  just  as  his  natural  emo- 
tion for  her  death  made  him  yet  more  loving  to  Dora. 

"  Don't  fret  my  darling,  I  will  take  care  of  you,"  he  said  in  a 
low  voice. 

Mrs.  Hamley  looked  pleased. 

"  Right,"  she  whispered.     "  Be  her  father — take  care  of  her," 

"  Have  you  no  word  for  me,  aunt  1 "  cried  Patricia  with  the 
passionate  cry  of  the  Esau  unjustly  defrauded.  "  Bless  me  too  1  " 

There  was  a  pause.  Mrs.  Haniley  looked  at  her  mece  wea  '-ily, 
sternly,  sadly. 

"  God  forgive  you,  and  turn  your  stubborn  heart.  I-  forgive 
you,"  was  then  her  feeble  response  made  with  an  effor4- ,  and 
again  her  eyes  turned  to  Dora.  "  God  bless  you,  my  Dora ! " 
she  murmured. 

No  other  word  was  spoken.  The  evening  sun  streamed  into 
the  room  and  showe'd  the  pallid  face  of  the  dying  woman  :  Pa- 
tricia's silent  agony,  yet  clear  of  self-reproach ;  the  grief,  the 
fear,  but  the  self-control  that  comes  of  the  very  need  of  terror, 
of  Dora ;  the  subdued  and  decent  regret  of  Mr.  Hamley.  divided 
as  he  was  between  pity  and  love,  regret  and  relief.  The  silence 
was  broken  only  by  the  harsh  rattle  of  the  labouring  breath 
growing  harder,  slower,  at  every  instant ;  by  the  stifled  sobs  of 
the  onlookers  gathered  there  to  watch  but  unable  to  help  ;  when 
suddenly,  Mrs.  Hamley  opened  her  eyes.  It  seemed  as  if  she 
saw  something  beautiful  in  the  air  before  her,  for  a  smile,  softer 
and  more  divine  than  ever  had  been  on  her  face  before,  irradiat- 
ed her  whole  countenance.  She  half  raised  herself  from  her 
pillow,  turning  towards  Patricia.  The  last  spark  of  life  blazed 
up  iu  her  eyes  with  a  sudden  vividness  that  burnt  more  like 


THE  LAST  LOOK.  439 

• 

fire  than  human  life.  She  could  not  speak,  though  her  dry  lips 
moved  ;  but  her  look  fastened  itself  on  the  girl  with  a  yearning 
and  intense  desire,  a  passionate  longing  that  was  as  mournful  as 
a  cry. 

Patricia  stooped  over  her  and  took  the  half-raiied  body  in 
her  arms. 

''•What  is  it  dear  ?"  she  said.     "  Do  you  know  me  now  I* 

The  face  that  looked  into  her*  was  scarcely  Aunt  Hatnley's 
face  at  all :  it  was  that  of  a  creature  divinely  illumined,  bright- 
ened with  more  than  human  knowledge,  burning  with  more  than 
human  love.  It  lasted  only  for  a  moment ;  but  that  moment 
seemed  an  eternity,  during  which  her  very  soul  had  looked  from 
her  eyes  into  Patricia's.  Then  her  head  sank  back  on  the  girl's 
arm,  her  glazed  eyes  turned,  her  jaw  d»opped,  her  laboured 
breathing  ceased  ;  and  she  was  dead.  But  she  died  in  her  niece's 
arms  and  her  last  look  had  been  hers. 

Patricia  laid  her  head  reverently  on  the  pillow,  and  with  a 
strange  superstitious  feeling  kissed  her  mouth  for  the  faint  ling- 
ering breath  that  might  be  about  her  lips. 

Mr.  Haiuley  stretched  out  his  large  hand  and  closed  her  eye- 
lids. 

"  Thus  die  the  Just,"  he  said  with  pompous  solemnity  ;  while 
Dora  drew  a  deep  breath  as  one  who  has  safely  skirted  by  a 
danger,  though  the  next  instant  she  slightly  shivered,  knowing 
what  was  before  her. 

To  Patricia  the  world  felt  wider  and  darker  somehow  now 
than  it  had  done  this  morning.  Her  last  relative  had  gone,  and 
she  remembered  with  a  pang  ot  self-reproach — how  base  it 
seemed  ! — her  terror  lest  her  aunt  should  send  for  h«r  to  live  at 
Abbey  Holme  again,  and  once  more  plunge  her  into  the  old  life 
of  misunderstanding  and  "consenting  with  sinners."  If  it 
could  have  brought  her  back  again  how  willingly  she  would 
have  returned  to  the  stifling  air  and  unwholesome  morals  of 
Abbey  Holme  !  If  her  own  sorrow  could  have  ensured  that 
poor  dead  soul's  peace,  how  gladly  she  would  have  paid  the 
price  !  But  the  door  was  closed  and  the  seal  set  for  all  timo 
now  ;  and  as  the  past  had  been  so  must  it  remain  for  eternity. 
She  could  only  hope  that  what  had  been  wrong  hero  was  made 
right  there  ;  but  for  this  world  all  was  over. 

Yet  it  was  cruel     Dora  blessed  and  loved  and  thanked,  and 


440  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  BO,  LOVE?" 

Dora  the  cause  of  it  all !  Dora  -who  had  lived  a  life  of  decep- 
tion from  the  first,  who  had  simply  offered  a  manner  for  a 
reality,  a  facile  temper  for  a  heart,  and  falsehood  for  truth  ;  and 
she  who  had  failed — she  scarcely  knew  why,  but  surely  not  for 
want  of  trying  to  succeed  by  faithful  endeavour — yet  she  was 
simply  forgiven  and  Dora  was  blessed  !  She  wished  her  aunt 
had  blessed  her  too.  She  was  glad  of  that  strange  loving  look; 
it  seemed  to  soften  the  hardness  of  the  last  word,  and  lessen  its 
injustice  ;  but  she  wished  that  she  had  blessed  her  1  She  had 
not  forfeited  this  holy  consecration  of  death  ;  she  had  been 
loyal  to  her  promise,  but  in  her  loyalty  she  had  not  injured  her 
aunt,  and  she  had  done  nothing  to  make  her  unworthy  of  her 
blessing.  It  had  been  a  less  sorrow  to  believe  her,  Patricia, 
guilty  of  some  mysterious  misdemeanor  than  it  would  have  been 
to  have  known  Dora's  life  of  deception  and  falsehood.  She  saw 
no  different  way  of  action  for  herself  had  she  her  time  to  come 
over  again  ;  unless  indeed  she  had  suspected  Dora  from  the  be- 
ginning, and  refused  to  do  the  service  asked  of  her.  But  still 
her  thoughts  went  back  to  the  central  point  of  her  sorrow  at 
this  moment;  she  wished  that  her  aunt  had  blessed  her  — that 
she  had  spoken  just  one  comfortable  word  of  love  and  trust  be- 
fore the  time  for  speech  had  passed  for  ever ! 

Presently  Mr.  Hamley  spoke. 

"  Your  dear  aunt  has  died  forgiving  you,"  he  said  to  Patricia, 
his  arm  still  about  Dora  ;  "  so  do  I." 

He  held  out  his  hand  over  the  bed,  and  Patricia,  waking  up 
from  her  dreamy  thoughts,  put  hers  into  it.  It  was  like  a  com- 
pact across  the  dead. 

"  Thank  you,"  she  said  simply.- 

She  knew  he  meant  well,  and  she  accepted  his  meaning  in 
lieu  of  the  right.  They  shook  hands  solemnly  ;  after  which 
Patricia  stooped  down  and  lovingly  kissed  the  white  still  face 
on  the  pillow.  Dora  and  Mr.  Hamley  kissed  it  too,  both  with 
a  certain  shudder ;  and  then  they  all  went  down  into  the  draw- 
ing-room, when  Patricia  prepared  to  go. 

"  Must  you  leave  now  ? "  said  Mr.  Hamley,  meaning  to  be 
kind.  "  if  you  must  you  must ;  but  remember  that  Dora  will 
always  be  your  friend." 

He  said  this  as  if  he  had  offered  her  a  coronet. 

Patricia  did  not  answer.     She  looked  at  Dora  hurriedly,  not 


THE  LAST  LOOK.  441 

wishing  to  draw  suspicion  on  her,  and  indeed  on  her  own  ac- 
count not  caring  to  look  at  her  longer  or  more  narrowly  than 
was  absolutely  necessary. 

The  fair  downward-bended  face  had  a  look  on  it  of  such  abject 
terror  overmastering  it  for  a  moment,  as  humiliated  Patricia  to 
see.  How  would  she  act  now  1  Dora  thought.  Her  silence 
during  Mrs.  Hamley's  lifetime  had  been  always  sure,  but  she 
did  not  feel  so  certain  of  it  now.  There  was  this  marriage  with 
Miss  Manley  publicly  talked  about :  would  she  keep  her  coun- 
sel faithfully  even  through  this  1  But  what  of  the  future  ? 
When  she  too  had  heard  that  word  which  had  to  come,  what 
would  she  do  1  Would  she  lift  up  her  voice  and  cry  aloud,  and, 
to  prevent  the  commission  of  a  sin,  tell  all  she  knew,  and  so 
dash  her  former  friend  headlong  to  destruction  ?  or  would  she 
still  keep  loyal  silence  and  consent  with  sin  and  sinners  for  the 
sake  of  truth  ?  This  was  why  she  looked  so  terrified  that  it 
touched  the  braver  heart  with  a  sense  of  shame  and  shared 
humiliation  to  see  it. 

.  ButPatricia  was  far  from  suspectingthe  truth  of  Mr.  Hamley's 
feelings  or  Dora's  cause  for  fear.  She,  like  her  aunt,  had  no 
other  idea  but  that  of  a  fatherly  affection  on  his  side  and  a  filial 
love  on  hers ;  and  as  for  Sydney  Lowe,  she  supposed  that  now, 
Aunt  Hamley  being  dead,  Dora  would  come  forward  openly  and 
prevent  the  illegal  marriage  of  her  husband  by  taking  up  her 
own  publicly.  She  was  sorry  for  her  too,  all  things  considered  j 
and  notwithstanding  her  own  griefs  against  her  would  not  have 
added  a  feather's  weight  to  her  troubles. 

"  I  hope  you  understand  that  it  will  be  a  good  thing  for  you 
to  have  Dora  as  your  friend,"  Mr.  Hamley  went  on  to  say. 
"Dora  will  have  a  large  amount  of  power  in  her  hands  ;  she 
will  be  mistress  of  Abbey  Holme,  and  you  will  want  some  one 
to  stand  by  you.  Dora  will  stand  by  you.  I  make  bold  to  gay 
so  much.  You  make  her  your  friend,  and  all  will  come  out 
square." 

"  Thank  you,  but  I  shall  not  ask  her  for  her  help,"  said 
Patricia  hastily. 

Dora  looked  up,  but  over  her  head,  not  into  her  face.  She 
avoided  Patricia'.;  eyes  as  she  spoke. 

"  I  will  always  be  glad  to  help  you,  dear,"  she  said  sweetly. 
"  you  are  her  niece  ;  and  this  kind,  good  friend,"  turning  to 


442  "WHAT  WOULD  YOTT  DO,  LOVE?" 

Mr.  Hamley  and  looking  at  him  with  shy  affection  and  covert 
and  most  delightful  consciousness,  "  this  dear  friend  has  always 
wished  you  well  and  been  good  to  you.  I  can  do  nothing  better 
than  carry  out  hi*  wi«hes." 

'  I  do  not  knovr  what  you  mean  exactly,"  said  Patricia  with 
a  certain  stately  bearing,  drawing  herself  away.  "  I  want  no 
help  of  any  kind,  and  what  I  want  more  than  I  have  I  can  work 
for.  The  greatest  good  that  you  could  have  done  me,  Dora, 
before  she  died,  you  refused  ;  I  want  nothing  of  you  now  !  " 

"  You  take  high  ground,  Miss  1 "  said  Mr.  Hamlev  with  an 
annoyed  air. 

"  I  mean  nothing  offensive,  but  I  can  accept  no  favour  at 
your  hands,  Mr.  Hamley,  nor  at  Dora's,"  said  Patricia. 

"  You  need  not  be  afraid.  Affairs  will  be  properly  conducted, 
and  not  the  most  particular-minded  person,  as  I  call  it,  will 
have  a  word  to  say,"  put  in  Mr.  Hamley  hastily. 

He  took  it  that  she  knew  his  heart  and  mind,  and  that  she 
resented  his  intentions.  And  for  a  moment  the  thought  flashed 
across  him  whether  "  that  tale  of  Gordon  Frere  was  all  a  bam, 
and  had  the  girl  taken  a  liking  for  himself  t  She  had  always 
been  uncommon  good  to  him,  and  more  unlikely  things  had 
happened. n 

"  I  am  sure  you  will  do  all  that  is  right,"  answered  Patricia, 
believing  him  to  mean  the  funeral,  or  the  disposition  of  his  wife's 
property  to  Dora,  or  something  else  in  the  way  of  business,  she 
did  not  know  what  ;  "  but  Dora  knows  quite  well  why  I  would 
not  accept  a  favour  from  her,  and  why  now  that  poor  aunty  has 
gone  I  have  no  place  here  and  never  shall  have  again." 

"  My  goodness !  Patricia,  I  know  nothing  of  the  kind  1 1  have 
not  the  least  idea  of  what  you  mean  1 "  cried  Dora  roused  co  un- 
usual energy  of  voice  and  temper  by  the  imminence  of  her  peril. 

"  Dora  !  how  can  yoa  carry  on  this  awful  thing  with  what  I 
know,  and  you  know  too,  and  with  what  we  have  just  seen  !  " 
cried  Patricia  pressing  her  hands  on  her  heart. 

"  What  the  dickens  does  the  girl  mean  1 "  cried  Mr.  Hamley 
looking  at  her  in  a  curiously  embarrassed  way. 

If  it  was  what  he  thought,  her  sentiments,  though  flattering 
and  predisposing  him  to  generous  treatment  and  kindly  judg- 
ment, were  decidedly  in  the  way  afc  the  present  moment,  and 
b,e  wished  her  to  understand  as  muck 


THE  LAST  LOOK.  443 

"  I  have  not  the  remotest  idea,"  said  Dora  sternly.  Then 
in  a  low  voice  she  added,  "  Our  poor  dear  thought  her  mad, 
and  I  do  rea'iy  believe  she  is." 

"  It  loo-,  .ike  it."  he  answered  in  the  same  key. 

He  went  up  to  Patricia,  and  took  both  her  hands  in  his, 
speaking  to  her  in  that  peculiar  way  in  which  people  speak  to 
maniacs — rather  loud,  in  »n  artificial  voice,  every  word  staccato 
and  distinct. 

"  Yes,  yes,  Dora  knows  all  about  it,"  he  said  wagging  his 
head  in  a  soothing  manner.  u  Dora  quite  understands  it  all — 
you  hear?  she  quite  understands  what  you  mean  ;  so  go  home 
now  like  a  good  girl, "and  tell  Miss  Fletcher  to  put  your  feet  in 
hot  water  It  will  draw  the  blood  from  your  head.  Bad 
thing,  blood  in  the  head,  my  dear,"  pointing  to  his  own  forehead 
with  his  forefinger  ;  "  hot  foot-bath  will  do  you  good." 

"  I  don't  understand  you,"  said  Patricia  looking  at  him  in 
blank  amazement.  "  What  do  you  mean  ? " 

Mr.  Hamley  rang  the  bell. 

"  Jones,"  he  said  when  the  man  entered  the  room,  "  is  the 
carriage  waiting  ' 

"  Yes,  sir,"  answered  Jones. 

"  Now  my  dear  Miss  Kemball,  let  me  send  you  to  your 
friends,"  said  Mr.  Hamley  graciously.  "  Jones  tell  Bignold  to 
put  on  her  bonnet  and  escort  Miss  Kemball -to  the  Hollies.  I 
do  not  like  her  to  go  alone,  Mrs  Hamley  did  not  like  h<*rto  go 
alone,"  with  a  sudden  sigh.  "  She  might  do  herself  a  mischief," 
in  a  whisper  to  Dora. 

And  Dora  answered,  "  Yes.     It  is  better  to  send  Bignold." 

How  lucky  it  was  that  she  thought  of  making  Patricia  mad  ! 
Whatever  she  might  say  now  Mr.  Hamley  would  not  believe 
her,  and  if  she  said  too  much  she  could  easily  get  her  locked 
up.  Only  the  ravings  of  a  diseased  brain  taking  the  false  im- 
pressions characteristic  of  disease  and  accusing. those  who  are 
the  nearest  and  dearest  of  impossible  crimes  1  It  was  a  happy 
thought,  and  she  was  infinitely  relieved  by  it ;  though  indeed 
she  was  not  cruel  or  hard  by  nature,  only  driven  into  both 
cruelty  and  hardness  by  fear  and  falsehood.  And  when  she 
thought  of  getting  Patricia  locked  up  in  a  lunatic  asylum  if  she 
told  too  much,  she  felt  something  like  a  person  who  is  being 
fast  surrounded  bv  the  tide,  when  he  suddenly,  strikes  on.  a  path- 


m  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

way  up  the  cliffs  which  lie  had  not  known  nor  foreseen,  and 
whom  it  would  but  little  discompose  if  he  had  to  fling  down  an 
unoffending  sheep  or  lamb  that  stood  in  his  way  and  made  his 
escape  else  impossible. 

Patricia  at  first  refused  both  Bignold  and  the  carriage  ;  but 
when  Mr.  Hamley  insisted  so  strongly  that  her  refusal  became 
contentious,  she  yielded,  and  suffered  him  to  take  her  out  to 
the  door  on  his  arm,  as  he  had  brought  her  in  just  about  a  year 
ago.  As  she  passed  through  the  hall  she  gave  one  sudden  sob 
as  if  her  heart  would  break ;  and  Mr.  Hamley  patted  her  hand 
affectionately.  The  new  idea  that  had  taken  possession  of  nim 
was  flattering,  if  inconvenient ;  and  he  felt  that  he  could  afford 
to  be  compassionate  to  the  poor  soul.  Then  they  shook  hands 
together,  and  he  was  really  quite  tender  to  her ;  so  much  so 
that  she  wondered  at  it,  and  the  servants  wondered  too  ;  as  he 
assisted  her  into  the  carriage,  and  so  sent  her  back  to  the 
Hollies  in  state,  and  guarded.  She  little  suspected  however 
that  the  former  maid  was  her  present  keeper,  and  that  she  was 
regarded  by  Mr.  Hamley  on  the  -MIO  hand  as  a  lunatic,  danger-" 
ous  to  leave  alone,  on  the  othei  as  a  poor  dear  unfortunate 
young  woman  who  had  contracted  a  not  unnatural  but  wholly 
unreturnable  affection  for  himself. 

"And  now,"  she  said,  after  sh^  had  told  her  friends  how 
her  aunt  had  died — told  them  t-\>  with  many  tears  of  that 
strange  earnest  look,  and  how  she  seemed  to  feel  in  it  that  the 
poor  darling  had  at  the  last  momeiM  recognised  her  innocence, 
and  what  a  comfort  it  was  that  sho  had  died  actually  in  her 
arms — when  all  this  was  told,  "and  now,"  she  said,  "we 
must  come  to  some  understanding  ibout  myself.  I  did  not 
mind  staying  here  so  long  as  poor  aunt  lived — somehow  it  did 
not  seem  like  fastening  myself  on  yon  because,  I  suppose  you 
could  have  sent  me  back  at  any  hoiu  when  you  were  tired  of 
me.  But  now  it  is  different.  *  I  cannot  live  on  you  for  ever; 
I  must  do  something  for  myself." 

"  Nonsense  ! "  said  Henry  Fletcher. 

"  Henry  is  right,"  said  Catherine.  "  Besides  my  dear,  to 
take  up  your  own  point,  you  cannot  do  anything  that  will  keep 
you.  No  one  who  has  not  a  specialised  education  can  make  a 
reasonable  income ;  and  so  few  women  have  a  specialised  educa 
tiou  I  You,  my  darling,  certainly  have  .ot." 


THE  LAST  LOOK.  445 

"But  I  can  learn  something,"  said  Patricia  a  little  vaguely. 

"  We  must  first  of  all  arrange  what  you  can  learn,  and  what 
you  can  utilise  when  learnt,"  Catherine  answered,  as  if  arguing 
a  possible  point. 

'  You  know  how  much  I  love  you  both,"  said  Patricia  ten- 
derly, as  she  returned  to  the  charge.  "  You  know  I  came  to 
you  like  your  own  child  when  I  was  in  trouble  ;  but  how  can  I 
go  on  living  here,  perhaps  for  years,  till  Gordon  comes  home 
and  is  able  to  marry  me  1  I  am  sure  you  must'  both  feel  it 
would  be  better  and  nobler  to  do  something  for  myself." 

"  So  it  would,  if  we  were  not  ourselves,"  Dr.  Fletcher  said. 
'*  If  you  were  with  any  one  else,  I  would  counsel  you  to  go  out 
into  the  world  and  be  industrious  and  independent ;  but  not 
from  us.  We  love  you  too  well,"  he  added,  looking  at  her 
quietly.  » 

"  Patricia,"  said  Catherine  glancing  at  her  brother.  "  I  am 
going  to  tell  you  something  ;  something  about  myself  that  you 
have  never  heard.  Henry  knows  it  all,  so  it  is  nothing  that 
will  shock  or  startle  him.  Long  before  you  were  born,  long 
before  your  father  married,  he  and  I  were  friends — the  dearest 
friends  !  My  darling,  he  was  the  only  man  I  ever  loved ;  and 
at  one  time  he  loved  me.  But  then,"  she  added  hastily,  "  he 
had  not  seen  your  mother.  Still,  we  weie  friends  and  lovers 
in  earlier  days,  and  but  for  a  merevchance  we  should  have  been 
married.  And  does  not  that  give  me  a  certain  claim  to  be 
your  pro-mother  now  1" 

Tears  stood  in  her  eyes,  and  the  round,  soft  matronly  cheek 
was  pale  while  she  spoke.  A  woman's  heart  never  grows  old, 
and  the  love  which,  by  long  years,  has  become  a  habit  of  re- 
membrance and  is  no  longer  a  present  influence,  has  neverthe- 
less always  the  same  power  to  move  her  when  spoken  of. 
Catherine  Fletcher's  love  had  been  very  true  and  very  deep. 
It  had  saddened  lier  life  for  many  a  long  day ;  and,  for  all  that 
it  was  a  thing  of  the  past  now,  and  she  was  entirely  happy  in 
her  life,  for  all  that  she  was  a  childless  old  maid  and  her  only 
love  had  married  and  died  so  many  years  ago— she  could  never 
speak  of  him  without  tears.  The  habit  of  remembrance  was 
the  habit  of  sorrow  too  ;  and  deep  down  in  her  heart  was  that 
everlasting  spring  of  grief  which,  however  closely  it  might  be 
covered  up,  would  never  run  dry.  Ah  1  the  graves  WQ  all  carry 


446  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

about  with  us  !  the  sorrows  that  time  only  scars  over  and  never 
heals  ! 

"  Then  uncle  knew  it  1"  cried  Patricia,  as  she  suddenly  re- 
membered her  uncle's  look  when  Gordon  was  speaking  of  Mr. 
Fletcher  the  solicitor,  and  how  he  had  mentioned  **  bonny  Kate" 
so  kindly. 

"Yes,  I  have  no  doubt  he  did;,  what  there  was  to  know, 
which  was  not  much,"  said  Catherine.  ':  He  and  your  poor 
father  were  very  fond  of  each  other,  »and  trusted  each  other  en 
tirely,  though  they  were  so  different  in  character  and  your  uncle 
so  much  the  older  of  the  two.  But  now  I  think  the  question 
is  settled.  You  will  look  on  me  as  a  kind  of  step-mother,  Pat- 
ricia t  They  are  not  all  as  bad  as  the  fairy-books  make  out. 
I  think  I  have  known  one  or  two  who  have  been  faithful,  and 
who  have  deserved  the  love  they  gained." 

"  Yes,  you  are  my  mother ! "  cried  Patricia,  throwing  her 
arms  round  Catherine's  neck  with  a  passionate  burst  of  self- 
surrender  ;  "  and  I  will  be  your  daughter,  now  and  for  ever. 
Thi»  is  home,  it  is  not  dependence  !  " 

"  Now  you  are  a  good  girl  and  a  wise  one,"  said  Henry 
quietly  ;  while  Catherine,  crying  too,  for  the  silly  sympathy  of 
tears  to  which  even  strong-hearted  women  yield,  could  only  kiss 
the  dear  young  face  that  was  resting  on  her  breast ;  and  call 
her  "  daughter  "  and  "  dear  child,"  while  feeling  as  if  she  was 
holding  Reginald  with  her  in  her  arms, — while  feeling  as  if  he 
was  there  and  knew  what  she  felt,  and  loved  her  for  what  she 
was  doing. 

So  that  little  hitch  was  got  over  satisfactorily.  Patricia  was 
formally  adopted  into  the  Hollies  as  the  daughter  of  the  house, 
and  Dr.  Fletcher  was  careful  to  call  her 4i  my  sister's  child  " 
when  he  spoke  of  her — which  was  not  offc«n. 

But  Milltown,  having  a  suspicious  mind,  WM  not  quite  cer- 
tain whether  it  approved  of  the  arrangement  or  not ;  and  at 
all  events  it  was  quite  sure  that  the  Hollies  was  just  the  worst 
home  that  odd  girl  could  have  found,  and  that  she,  in  her  turn, 
was  just  the  most  undesirable  kind  of  young  person  those  fool- 
ish people  could  have  adopted.  And,  good  heavens  !  why  did 
they  want  to  adopt  any  one  t  These  things  always  turn  out 
badly,  prophesied  the  malcontents  ;  and  the  best  wisdom  in  life 
is  to  accept  the  fewest  responwbiliteei,  and  to  interfere  least 
with  other  folks'  concerns. 


FREE  TO  PLEAD. 


CHAPTER  XL. 

FREE  TO  PLEAD. 

HAMLEY  did  the  thing  handsomely.  If  the  Count- 
ess  of  Doredale  herself  had  died  there  could  not  have 
been  a  more  splendid  show  of  grief ;  perhaps  there 
would  not  have  been  one  so  splendid.  The  shops  put  up  their 
mourning  shutters,  and  all  the  blinds  of  the  private  houses  were 
drawn  as  the  magnificent  cortege,  the  best  Milltown,  helped  by 
the  county  capital,  eould  furnish — tramped  slowly  down  the 
High  Street  to  the  intense  enjoyment  of  a  hundred  peeping 
eyes.  The  two  or  three  little  fishing-boats  lying  in  the  harbour 
had  streamers  hoisted  half-mast  high — they  had  been  sent  down 
by  order,  and  were  scarlet  and  buff,  the  Hamley  colours,  with  a 
black  bar  for  mourning  across  ;  half  the  community  were  made 
mourners  by  the  undertaker,  and  had  hat-bands  and  scarves  aa 
symbols  of  their  grief;  and  on  the  Sunday  following  Mr.  Bor- 
rodaile  preached  the  funeral  sermon,  wherein  he  called  the  de- 
funct Mrs.  Hamley  a  mother  in  Israel,  and  said  that  at  the  last 
day  the  poor,  who  were  her  children,  would  rise  up  and  call  her 
blessed.  Seeing  that  the  practice  of  almsgiving  was  held  in 
abhorrence  at  Abbey  Holme,  and  that  charitable  contributions 
were  condemned  as  bad  political  economy,  this  was  taking  rather 
more  than  the  ordinary  ecclesiastical  license,  which  as  a  rule 
goes  even  beyond  the  poetic. 

As  for  Mr.  Hamley's  private  and  personal  emblems  of  woe 
they  were  of  the  most  expressive  and  expansive  kind.  The 
crape  on  his  hat  did  not  leave  a  quarter  of  an  inch  ot  bearer  to 
be  seen ;  his  jet  studs  and  watch-chain  were  of  the  largest  size 
and  broadest  and  most  florid  pattern  made ;  and  his  glossy  black 
clothes  seemed  as  if  an  extra  dip  in  the  dyeing- vat  had  been, 
given  to  them.  Dora's  mourning  was  almost  as  deep  M  a 
widow's  ;  save  the  characteristic  cap  indeed,  it  might  hare  been 
a  widow's.  She  looked  very  fair  and  interesting  in  her  sables 
— "  black  always  did  became  her,"  s»id  Bignold,  who  had  bten 


*48  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

promoted — black,  just  touched  round  the  face  with  a  narrow 
line  of  transparent  white;  and  when  she  came  into  church, 
leaning  on  Mr.  Hamley's  arm,  she  created  quite  a  sensation  by 
the  unusual  prettiness  of  her  person  and  the  presumed  desolate- 
ness  of  her  condition. 

She  was  assumed  to  be  so  desolate,  and  Mr.  Hamley's  grief 
was  taken  to  be  so  sincere,  that  Garth  was  heard  to  say  bitter- 
ly :  "  He's  had  it  out  of  the  Psalms  now,  and  God.  has  cursed 
the  unrighteous  as  He  promised  ! " 

After  this  Sunday  there  was  a  great  deal  of  talk  throughout 
Milltown  about  Dora.  What  would  become  of  her  no  one  could 
exactly  determine.  Of  course  she  could  not  live  at  Abbey  Holme 
with  Mr.  Hainley  alone ;  and  until  he  married  again,  which  he 
was  pretty  sure  to  do,  her  case  seemed  a  hard  one,  brought  up 
as  she  had  been  and  made  so  much  fuss  with,  they  said  among 
themselves.  A  few  wondered  whether  the  great  man  would 
marry  Dora  herself ;  but  for  the  most  part  they  believed  he 
would  look  higher  than  his  cousin,  and  maybe  plant  his  foot  in 
the  peerage  this  time.  Besides,  men  don't  generally  take  for  their 
wives  their  own  dependants  whom  they  have  seen  grow  up  un- 
der their  roofs  from  childhood.  So  it  was  settled  by  the  majority 
that  Dora  would  have  to  leave  Abbey  Holme,  and  that  Mr.  Ham- 
ley  would  marry  some  grand  lady  of  high  degree  and  small  pos- 
sessions, and  found  the  Hamley  family  at  last. 

Colonel  Lowe,  discussing  the  great  event  of  the  hour  with, 
his  son,  supposed  for  his  part  that  Mr.  Hamley  would  marry 
Dora.  He  could  understand  now  the  old  shoeblack's  policy,  he 
said.  He  had  loved  the  girl  himself,  and  in  all  probability 
everything  had  been  understood  and  arranged  between  them 
long  ago  ,  which  was  the  secret  of  his  refusal  to  give  her  a  dowry 
when  he,  Sydney  Lowe,  had  done  her  the  honour  to  propose  to 
her. 

"  Any  one  can  see  it  with  half  an  eye.  It  was  clear  as  day- 
light to  me  at  the  time,  as  you  must  remember  I  hinted  broadly 
enough  to  you,"  said  the  Colonel  in  his  disdainful  way.  "  These 
low-bred  people  have  always  their  mysteries  and  intrigues  on 
hand ;  and  Syd,  my  boy,  you  are  well  out  of  that  galkre.  You 
have  made  better  terms  for  yourself  by  a  long  way,  and  chosen 
as  a  gentleman  should." 

This  he  said  joyously,  with  his  hand  laid  kindly  on  his  soa's 


FREE  TO  FL^AU.  449 

shoulder,  who  looked  sulky  and  by  no  means  responsive.  He 
had  not  seen  Dora  since  his  engagement  with  Julia  Manley,  and 
he  dreaded  though  he  longed  to  see  her.  He  did  not  know  how 
he  could  face  her  with  such  news  as  he  had  to  bring,  but  he 
thought  she  would  understand  the  necessities  of  his  position, 
and  he  did  not  want  to  lose  her — -in  the  future.  He  did  warmly 
and  honestly  love  her  with  such  warmth  and  honesty  as  he 
possessed  ;  and  though  his  love  sprang  from,  and  rested  on,  only 
the  lowest  stratum  of  a  man's  fancy  and  passion,  still  it  was  all 
he  had  to  give ;  and  if  gold  cannot  be  got  from  brass,  what 
qualities  brass  has  in  itself  may  at  least  be  recognised. 

Among  the  other  qualities  however,  which  this  love'of  his 
possessed,  jealousy  was  one  of  the  strongest ;  and  when  he 
hecird  his  father  speak  of  Dora's  possibly  belonging  to  Mr.  Ham- 
ley,  he  felt  as  if  he  should  go  mad  on  the  spot — mad  enough 
to  throw  Julia  and  her  thousands  to  the  wind,  confess  every- 
thing, and  take  Dora  away — into  poverty  if  it  mast  be — so  long 
as  it  was  into  his  own  keeping  before  the  world,  safe  from  any 
other  man's  intrusion.  But  the  habits  of  a  lifetime,  and  the 
sordid  aims  of  a  selfish  nature,  were  too  strong  for  him.  Pov- 
erty was  Sydney  Lowe's  Apollyon  whom  he  dared  not  fight  and 
could  not  conquer ;  and  rather  than  meet  this  terrible  demon, 
whom  we  of  the  nineteenth  century  dread  more  than  all  the 
others  drawn  up  in-line  of  battle  together,  he  would  consent  to 
be  perjured  on  his  own  account,  and  to  give  up  the  woman  he 
loved — and  had  married.  He  was  essentially  the  child  of  the 
age  ;  indifferent  to  everything  but  physical  enjoyment  and  so- 
cial well-being,  and  with  no  more  belief  in  morals  than  he  had 
in  religion. 

Provided  a  mail  is  not  found  out,  it  does  not  much  signify 
what  he  does,  according  to  Sydney  Lowe ;  and  rather  than  be 
found  out  in  a  folly  that  would  carry  consequences,  he  would 
commit  a  crime  for  concealment.  Money  and  position  were  his 
two  gods  of  equal  height  and  power;  and  to  these  everything 
in  heaven  and  earth,  in  life  and  humanity,  had  to  give  way. 

Not  being  able,  however,  to  bear  his  father's -cynicism,  and 
being  as  profoundly  miserable  as  he  could  be — an  J  if  shallow, 
he  was  passionate — he  dashed  from  the  room,  determined  to 
see  Dora  at  any  cost,  and  to  come  to  some  definite  understand- 
ing with  her — his  wife ;  his  wife,  married  to  another  man  1  That 
CO 


450  "  tt'HAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?'* 

he  should  destroy  his  own  secret  marriage  was  one  thing,  and 
in  the  circumstances  in  which  he  found  himself  quite  allowable, 
if  to  be  regretted  ;  but  that  Dora  should  give  herself  and  her 
smiles  to  Mr.  Hamley — no  !  he  could  not  stand  by  and  see  that 
done  !  She  might  commit  a  crime  as  well  as  himself,  so  far  as 
the  sin  was  concerned.  It  was  not  that  which  troubled  him. 
But  she  should  not  give  him  a  rival ;  and  the  liberty  he  took 
for  himself  he  would  kill  her  before  she  should  share. 

While. he  was  fuming  at  his  unlucky  position  with  all  its 
detestable  surroundings,  cursing  Julia,  his  father,  Dora,  Mr. 
Hamley,  every  one  concerned  but  himself,  Mr.  Hamley  at 
Abbey  Holme  was  talking  seriously  to  Dora. 

It  was  Monday  evening,  the  day  after  the  funeral  sermon 
which  had  closed  the  cycle  of  the  burial  solemnities.  Every- 
thing was  done  now.  Even  the  undertaker's  bill  was  paid,  as 
well  as  the  bills  for  servants'  mourning  and  liveries,  the  carriage 
trappings,  and  the  like :  by  which  Mr.  Hamley  got  off  a  large 
discount  for  ready  money.  At  home,  everything  characteristic 
of  and  belonging  to  Mrs.  Hamley  was  put  away.  Her  special 
little  work-table  had  been  placed  like  a  shrine  in  a  corner  ;  her 
special  chair  removed ;  her  pile  of  handsomely  bound  religious 
books  was  laid  up  in  the  library  ;  and  her  whole  personal  pro- 
perty was  made  over  unconditionally  to  Dpra,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  few  poor  trinkets  and  ornaments  she  had  possessed 
before  her  marriage.  These  were  sent  down  to  Patricia  labelled 
"  Family  heirlooms,"  and  accompanied  by  a  note  meant  to  be 
kind  but  worded  with  unconscious  offensiveness,  wherein  Mr. 
Hamley  conveyed  these  precious  deposits  to  her  keeping  as  the 
last  representative  of  the  Kemball  family ;  at  the  same  time 
begging  to  enclose  a  aum  of  fifty  pounds  in  token  of  respect  for 
the  dear  departed  whose  niece  she  was,  and  to  meet  expenses 
incidental  on  the  melancholy  event.  It  was  kindly  thought  if 
'  clumsily  and  pompously  done  ;  and  Patricia  had  no  idea  she 
should  hurt  him  as  she  did  when  she  returned  his  fifty-pound 
note  with  thanks.  But  he  -was  really  hurt.  The  man's  heart 
just  then  was  softened,  and  he  was  more  &ensitive  than  he  had 
ever  been  in  his  life  before. 

Well !  the  Kemball  page  of  his  life  was  turned  down  now  for 
ever  ;  and  as  he  said,  with  a  not  undeserved  sense  of  satisfac- 
tion, judging  by  his  lights,  it  was  a  page  of  which  he  was  not 


SftEE  TO  PLEAD.  451 

ashamed,  and  where  he  had  done  his  cfuty  like  a  'man.  But 
now  he  was  free— the  last  word  had  been  spelt  out,  the  last 
line  written.  He  had  gonawthrough  his  lesson  triumphantly, 
and  now  his  play-time  had  begun.  He  was  free— free  to  plead, 
free  to  enjoy.  The  man  had  never  looked  so  well,  so  near  to  a 
strain  of  nobleness  as  he  did  this  evening  when  he  came  into 
the  drawing-room  after  dinner,  prepared' to  receive  the  crown- 
ing mercy  of  his  life. 

Dora  was  sitting  in  her  accustomed  place  alone,  dressed  for 
dinner  as  usual ;  pretty,  soft,  amiable  also  as  usual  •  but  de- 
voured by  secret  fear  and  anxiety,  knowing  exactly  what  was 
to  come  but  not  knowing  how  it  would  end. 

When  Mr.  Hamley  entered,  and  she  met  him  with  her  pretty 
smile  subdued  to  the  proper  melancholy  tone  of  the  moment, 
making  a  graceful,  half-receptive  movement  of  her  head  and 
hand  as  if  welcoming  him  to  her  apartment — she  saw  her  fate. 
She  saw  it  in  the  man's  white,  moved  face;  in  the  subtle 
change  from  master  to  wooer,  from  friend  to  lover  which  was 
in  every  line  and  movement,  as  he  drew  a  chair  close  to  her 
and  in  his  turn  motioned  her  to  sit  down.  It  was  a  queer, 
theatrical  manner  of  meeting ;  but  it  was  the  kind  of  thing 
that  pleased  him.  All  display  did. 

He  oame  to  plead.  He  came  confident  of  the  result,  but 
timid  too,  as  real  love  makes  even  strong  men  before  they  are 
assured.  He  came  to  pour  out  such  wealth  of  affection  as  he 
possessed  like  hoarded  treasures  in  her  lap  ;  and  Dora  looking 
up  at  him  with  her  sweet,  affectionate  little  face,  and  heart  that 
seemed  to  stand  still  for  dread,  only  wished  that  he  might  die 
— fall  dead  there  at  her  feet— before  he  had  got  time  to  say 
what  he  had  waited  almost  these  ten  years  to  say,  and  what 
she  herself  had  made  it  a  crime  to  hear. 

He  sat,  down  beside  her,  and  took  her  dainty  hand  in  both 
his  own. 

"  Dora,"  he  said  in  a  husky  voice,  so  low  and  changed  it 
scarcely  sounded  like  his  voice  at  all  j  "I  have  something  to 
say  to  you."  < 

"  Yes,"  said  Dora  innocently. 

Had  she  not  had  nerves  of  steel  she  would  have  shrieked 
aloud  in  her  terror.     As  it  was,  she  smiled  tenderly,  and  looked 
with  the  sweetest  friendliness,  like  a  child  or  an  angel  by  hia, 
side. 


452  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  It  cannot  be  a  matter  of  amazement  to  you  what  I  have  to 
gay,"  began  Mr.  Hamley  oratorically ;  but  his  grand  manner 
ill  accorded  with  his  tremhling^hands  and  unsteady  voice. 
*'  You  must  have  discovered  it  tor  yourself  that  I  love  you — 
love  you  very  dearly,  I  may  say." 

"You  have  always  been  the  kindest  of  the  kind  to  me,"  said 
Dora,  lifting  her  eyes  .with  her  special  look  of  shy  girl's  grati- 
tude. 

"  I  have  tried  to  be  so,"  he  answered.  "  It  was  not  difficult, 
feeling  what  I  did  for  you.  From  the  first  moment  when  you 
came  into  the  house,  a  pretty  little  girl,  just  budding  as  one 
may  say,  up  to  this  hour  when  I  have  your  hands  in  mine  over 
my  desolate  hearth,  I  have  loved  you." 

Dora  gave  his  hand  a  little  press,  but  said  nothing. 

"  Year  by  year  as  you  grew  prettier  and  more  and  more  the 
lady,  I  grew  more  to  love  you,"  he  went  on  to  say,  drawing  a 
deep  breath.  "  But  I  do  not  think  I  ever  took  advantage  of  my 
position,  or  treated  you  with  anything  but  the  respect  which  I 
should  naturally  show  a  lady.  You  have  been  always  the  lady 
with  me,  Dora.  I  loved  you — no  man  more;  but  I  think  1  may 
claim  to  say  that  I  did  not  show  it  to  you  rudely,  or  make  the 
sainted  soul  who  has  just  left  us  anxious  or  uneasy." 

"  You  have  been  always  very  good  to  me,"  said  Dora  softly. 
"  No  one  could  have  treated  anyone  with  more  kindness  or  gen 
erosity  than  you  have  treated  me." 

"  I  have  wished  to  do  so,  Dora  !  I  have  wished  to  do  so ! 
But  it  has  been  hard  work  at  times  to  control  myself ;  and  when 
other  men  came  after  you,  it  was  a  struggle  then,  I  can  tell  you. 
Still,  I  did ;  and  I  am  proud  of  myself  that  I  did.  At  one  time 
I  was  afraid  of  that  young  dog — that  young  Lowe." 

Dora  raised  her  pretty  shoulder*  with  a  movement  of  disdain. 
"  Oh  ! "  she  said,  with  a  satirical  little  laugh. 

"  But  you  assured  me  it  was  not  so,  and  I  \rat  content.  I 
said  to  myself,  Dora  does  not  know  my  heart.  Dora  does  not 
see  that  1  love  her — as  a  man  and  a  husband  I  must  control  my- 
self, and  not  let  Dora  know  my  great  designs  for  her  when  the 
sainted  soul  shall  be  taken  from  us.  If  I  could  show  myself  to 
Dora,  and  let  her  understand  me  and  the  future  I  design  for  her, 
I  should  have  no  fear  ;  but  as  I  cannot,  I  must  do  my  best  to 
keep  her  safe,  and  to  save  her  from  mere  tuffc-hunters,  greedy  of 


FREE  TO  PLEAD.  453 

money,  like  that  mean  fellow  Lowe.  So  I  put  it  to  you,  Dora, 
a»  you  may  remember ;  and  I  cannot  tell  you  how  you  light- 
ened my  heart  when  you  said  you  did  not  love  him.  Dora,  you 
gave  me  new  life  that  day  ! " 

He  said  this  with  a  burst  of  tenderness  that  nearly  broke 
him  down.  It  was  pathetic  in  its  own  way  to  see  the  coarse, 
strong  face  of  the  man  softened  and  quivering  with  emotion,  to 
see  his  eyes  turned  with  such  tender  longing  on  the  fair  droop- 
ing head  beside  him,  his  self-complacency  absorbed  in  the  inten- 
sity of  his  love  for  this  girl  who  was  fooling  him.  Whatever 
of  pure  and  true  and  noble  there  was  in  Mr.  Hamley's  nature 
was  all  centred  in  his  love  for  Dora — Dora,  the  wife  of  Sydney 
Lowe — the  Rachel  for  whom  he  had  waited  so  long,  and  who 
had  deceived  him  as  she  had  deceived  everyone  else. 

"  And  you  do  not  love  him  1"  continued  Mr.  Hamley  in  the 
tone  of  a  question.  He  was  sure  of  his  answer,  but  he  longed 
to  hear  it  again.  There  are  some  things  which  never  tire  in 
repetition,  and  the  assurance  to  a  jealous  man  that  he  has  no 
cause  for  jealousy  is  one  of  them. 

She  lifted  her  eyes  to  his  face  with  her  sudden  swift  look, 
dropping  the  lids  immediately. 

"  Love  him  ! "  she  said  with  the  most  enchanting  contempt. 
"  No  ! " 

"And,  Dora,  you  do  love  me?  Let  me' hear  you  say  so, 
darling  !  You  have  often  told  me  so  with  those  pretty  eyes  of 
yours  ;  tell  me  so  now  in  words,"  he  pleaded.  "I  must  hear 
you  say  it — '  I  love  you  ! ' ' 

"  1  love  you  ! "  replied  Dora  in  a  low  voice.  It  was  her  task, 
and  she  must  get  through  it  in  the  best  way  she  could.  "Poor 
Syd  !  "  she  thought  a  little  ruefully  ;  which  did  not  prevent  her 
saying  her  prescribed  formula  in  the  most  bewitching  manner 
possible. 

He  caught  her  to  his  heart.  Strong,  conceited,  arrogant  aa 
he  was,  at  this  moment  he  was  nothing  but  the  humble  and  en- 
raptured lover  whom  a  pair  of  blue  eyes  and  two  red  rosebud 
lips  had  transported  into  heaven. 

"  Now  I  have  won  all  that  I  care  for  in  life  ! "  he  said,  smooth- 
ing her  hair  with  a  tremulous  hand.  "  Dora  as  my  wife  puts  the 
finishing  touch  to  it  all.  Ob,  Dora,  you  have  made  a  happy 
man  of  me  to-night !  My  darling,  my  pretty  pet,  my  little 
queen,  how  happy  I  shall  be  !  how  happy  I  am  !  " 


454  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"You  have  made  me  happy  too,"  said  Dora  from  the  breadth 
of  his  chest  where  her  golden  head  was  resting;  "how  shall  I 
get  out  of  this  awful  scrape  !  "  being  the  unspoken  commentary 
that  ran  side  by  side  with  her  words. 

He  passed  his  large  hand  over  her  face.  It  was  such  a  de- 
licious luxury  to  him  to  feel  that  he  had  so  far  the  right.  He 
had,  as  he  truly  boasted,  always  treated  her  with  self-restraint 
and  respect,  and  the  slackening  of  the  curb  was  a  joy  so  great 
he  scarcely  regretted  the  price  of  so  many  years'  control  he  had 
paid  for  it. 

"  But  we  will  keep  it  secret  between  ourselves,  my  dear,"  he 
said.  "  I  should  not  like  to  do  anything  that  would  be  offen- 
sive to  that  sainted  soul's  memory.  She  was  a  good  wife  to  me, 
if  a  trifle  crabbed  and  stiff,  and  1  would  not  like  people  to  say 
that  I  danced  on  her  grave,  or  took  my  second  wife  before  my 
first  was  cold.  We  will  keep  all  this  to  our  two  selves  ;  and 
when  the  year  is  out  we  will  be  married  quietly,  you  know,  and 

M-dthout  much  of  a  spread.  Don't  you  think  I  am  right,  Dora'? " 
"  Certainly,"  she  said.  "  No  one  must  know  !  " 
She  said  this  quite  warmly.  It  was  a  reprieve  to  her  so  far, 
and  who  knows  what  that  reprieve  might  not  bring  forth  ? 
Mr.  Hamley  might  die — he  did  not  look  very  like  it  though  ; 
or  Sydney  might  die  ;  or  Julia  Manley  ;  or  a  thousand  things 
might  happen  which  would  set  her  feet  free  from  their  present 
fetters.  Wherefore  she  assented  with  alacrity,  and  so  gave 
Mr.  Hamley  cause  to  congratulate  himself  again  on  the  posses- 
sion of  a  prospective  wife  so  full  of  nice  feeling  and  so  entirely 
the  lady  as  dear  Dora. 

Furthermore  it  was  agreed  between  them  that  Dora  should 
sometimes  visit  friends,  and  sometimes  live  at  Abbey  Holme, 
where  there  should  always  be  some  married  woman  to  he  her 
chaperon  and  bear  her  countenance,  as  Mr.  Hamley  said ;  and 
that  everything  should  be  conducted  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
give  no  cause  of  scandal  to  a  world  only  too  ready  to  find  cause. 
"  I  must  have  my  Dora's  name  kept  as  clean  as  a  new  pin  1 " 
said  Mr.  Hamley  with  more  poetry  of  feeling  than  of  speech. 
"  We  both  owe  so  much  to  the  memory  of  the  dear  departed." 
To  which  Dora,  sighing  with  the  most  admirable  imitation 
of  melancholy,  said,  "  Yes,  we  do,"  and  was  rewarded  for  her 
sweetness  by  a  kiss. 


FREE  TO  PLEAD.  455 

So  the  evening  passed,  and  there  was  not  in  all  England  a 
happier  heart  or  a  prouder  man  than  Jabez  Hamley,  M.P.,  and 
the  accepted  lover  of  Dora.  Not  all  the  wealth  of  England 
could  have  won  him  from  his  present  position.  He  had  not  a 
wish  ungratified — not  a  care,  not  a  cloud  in  his  horizon  any 
where.  Accustomed  to  self-control  and  fond  of  display,  it  was 
no  great  trial  to  him  to  have  that  year  of  probation  before  he 
could  call  Dora  really  his  own.  He  wanted  the  world  tosee  how 
decorously  he  could  mourn  for  the  sainted  soul  who  had  just 
departed.  He  too,  like  Mrs.  Hamley,  knew  that  affection  and 
harmony  are  the  only  things  which  render  marriage  respecta- 
ble, and  that  one  of  open  disunion  is  also  one  of  open  scandal. 
It  would  have  been  painful  to  him,  and  would  have  brushed 
the  bloom  from  the  flower  of  his  happiness,  had  any  one  been 
able  to  suspect  that  he  had,  as  he  said,  danced  on  his  wife's  grave, 
and  taken  a  second  before  the  first  was  cold.  It  was  even  an 
additional  pleasure  to  him  that  he  was  obliged  to  conceal  his 
joy.  It  seemed  to  make  it  more  entirely  his  own  ;  and  the 
secret  which  no  one  shared  with  him  and  Dora  was  so  much 
the  closer  bond  between  them.  Yes  he  was  thoroughly,  divinely 
happy.  He  stood  on  the  pinnacle,  and  asked  no  more  of  man 
or  gods. 

The  next  day  he  went  down  to  Mr.  Simpson's  office. 

"  Simpson,"  he  said  in  a  melancholy  voice,  "  I  wish  to  add  a 
codicil  to  my  will" 

Obsequious  Simpson  bowed.  "  Certainly,  Mr.  Hamley  ; 
certainly,  sir,"  he  said.  "  Your  instructions  ? " 

"  Only  a  few  words,"  said  Mr.  Hamley.  "Absolute  and  un- 
conditional bequeathment  of  all  of  which  I  may  die  possessed, 
in  whatever  form  the  property  may  consist,  to  my  cousin,  Dora 
Drummond." 

Mr.  Simpson  was  too  wise  to  show  any  feeling,  but  he  was 
profoundly  astonished  all  the  same.  He  w*s  even  more  so  when 
Mr.  Hamley  declared  he  would  not  leave  the  office  till  this  co- 
dicil had  been  written,  signed,  witnessed,  and  delivered.  The 
man's  whole  nature  seemed  changed.  With  his  widower's 
sorrowful  air  was  a  certain  abounding  sense  of  inner  joy  that 
did  not  escape  a  man  so  astute  as  the  Milltown  lawyer  ;  but  he 
made  no  comment  farther  than  that  it  was  natural  for  Mr. 
Hamley  to  wish  to  ensure  the  well-being  of  his  only  relation  : 


456  "WHAT  WOTTLn  VOTT  T>O,  LOVE?" 

and  tli at,  -wiping  no  ill  to  Miss  Drummond,  he  yet  hoped  she 
would  not  profit  by  his  generous  disposition  in  her  favour  for 
many  a  long  day  yet  to  come,  if  indeed  she  ever  did. 

To  all  of  which  Mr.  Hamley  answered  judiciously,  and  rode 
away  with  a  light  heart  ;  feeling  that  should  he  meet  with  any 
accident,  which  however  he  did  not  expect,  dear  Dora  would  be 
fully  provided  for  and  would  wear  his  memory  in  perpetual 
magnificence  and  sorrow.  He  wished  though,  that  he  had  made 
a  proviso  against  her  marrying.  In  his  lover-like  haste  to  as- 
sure her  good  fortune,  he  had  not  thought  of  that  ;  but  he  felt 
it  would  be  enough  to  make  him  turn  in  his  grave,  as  people 
say,  if  Dora  should  marry  on  his  money  ;  and  he  was  deter- 
mined to  repair  the  omission  tomorrow.  Taking  time  by  the 
forelock  was  one  of  Mr.  Hamley'a  principles  as  well  as  Colonel 
Lowe's  ;  and  to-morrow  he  would  acton  it. 

Meanwhile  he  went  home  to  what  it  pleased  him  to  call  out 
of  doors  his  desolate  hearth,  where  he  found  a  superb  little  din- 
ner, and  a  beautiful  young  woman  in  the  most  becoming  dress 
possible  to  be  constructed  out  of  crape  and  bugles,  waiting  to 
receive  him  with  a  mixture  of  open  friendliness  and  secret  bash- 
fulness  which  seemed  to  him  just  the  most  fascinating  mixture 
of  manner  any  lady  could  evince. 

This  evening  too  passed  like  the  former,  save  that  the  softer 
tremulousness  of  the  as  yet  unassured  suitor  had  gone,  and  a 
certain  fever  of  delight — a  certain  bounding,  irrepressible,  and 
enthusiastic  joy — had  taken  its  place.  -He  could  not  go  to 
bed  ;  he  could  not  sleep  ;  and  when  Dora  stole  down  the  etairs 
in  her  old  noiseless  way,  and  went  out  into  the  garden  to  meet 
her  husband,  from  whom  she  had  had  a  peremptory  letter  to- 
day (she  could  receive  private  letters  now),  Mr.  Hamley  was 
in  his  own  room  thinking  of  .her,  and  of  all  she  had  said  and 
done  to  him  to-night.  She  was  like  a  fairy  or  an  angel,  he 
thought  with  a  smile ;  and  that  fairy,  that  angel,  loved  him 
and  was  bis ! 

"  Where  nothing  is,  but  all  things  seem  !  "  How  much  of 
life  is  real  anywhere  1  Prosperity,  happiness,  truth,  even  love 
— what  is  actual,  what  only  an  appearance?  More  secrets  lie 
behind  the  closed  doors  of  hearts  and  homes  than  the  world 
outside  ever  dreams  of;  and  more  men  worship  shadows  and 
are  made  happy  by  pretences  than  ever  come  to  the  knowledge 
that  they  have  been  tricked. 


1H.E  SHADOW  I.\    liLE  WOOD.  457 


CHAPTER  XLL 

THE  SHADOW  IN-  THE  WOOD. 

YD,  it  has  come  at  last  1J'  cried  Dora  as  she  ran  into 
her  husband's  arms  in  the  shrubbery. 

What  had  come  1  thought  Sydney.  Her  knowledge 
of  his  intended  marriage  with  Julia  Manley  ?  or  had  Mr.  Hamley 
discovered  all  1  or  could  it  be  that  his  father  was  right,  and 
that  this  vulgar  ruffian  had  dared  to  lift  his  eyes  to  the  prize 
he  had  won  ] 

"  What  has  come,  Dora  t "  he  asked  quickly. 

"  Mr.  Hamley,"  said  Dora. 

"What  about  Mr.  Hamley V  repeated  Sydney.  "You 
speak  in  riddles  to-night — do  please  be  plain!  " 

Dora  felt  all  the  awkwardness  of  the  confession  she  had  to 
make ;  but  as  it  must  be  done  she  had  better  get  over  the  bad 
piece  of  road  as  quickly  as  possible.  It  was  a  curious  position  • 
for  a  woman  to  have  to  tell  her  husband  that  she  had  pretended 
— only  pretended,  mind ! — she  was  going  to  be  married  to 
another  man,  even  when  that  husband  had  announced  his  in- 
tention of  marrying  another  woman  ! 

"  Mr.  Hamley  has  proposed  to  me,"  said  Dora,  clasping  her 
hands  in  each  other  and  resting  them  on  his  bended  arm. 

The  moon  was  bright  enough  for  her  to  see  her  husband's 
eyes,  and  she  did  not  like  the  look  in  them.  She  felt  there 
was  mischief  behind  them  ;  and  angry  as  she  was  with  him  she 
instinctively  met  it  with  a  caress. 

Caresses  do  a  great  deal  with  some  men,  and  in  general  they 
did  a  great  deal  with  Sydney  Lowe.  But  though,  when  she 
looked  as  she  looked  now,  she  had  hitherto  always  made  his 
will  her  own,  to-night  she  failed.  Between  love  and  jealousy 
the  latter  was  the  stronger  of  the  two. 

"And  what  did- you  say,  Dora?"  he  asked,  griping  her 
hands  harshly. 

"  Wiiat  could  I  say,  dear  ? "  she  answered  deprecatingly. 


458  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE?" 

"  I  did  not  ask  that.  You  could  say  a  great  many  tilings. 
I  asked,  what  did  you  sayt"  he  repeated,  still  with  his  dead- 
white  face  and  flaming  eyes  and  dangerously  calm  manner. 

"  Dora  looked  at  him  innocently. 

*  "  I  said,  yes,  of  course.     What  else  was  there  for  me  to  do  1 " 
she  answered,  arching  her  eye-brows. 

With  a  savage  oath  he  flung  away  the  hands  which  until  now 
he  had  been  grasping,  and  lifted  his  arm  as  if  to  strike  her. 
Had  she  shrunk  or  cowered,  he  would;  but  she  stood  her 
ground  so  quietly,  and  looked  at  him  so  prettily,  that  in  a 
manner  she  unnerved  him.  She  was  desperately  frightened 
nevertheless ;  but  it  would  never  do  to  let  Sydney  see  that  she 
was  afraid  of  him,  she  thought.  She  must  hold  her  own  now 
or  never,  and  make  him  understand  that  by  his  own  iniquity 
he  had  made  himself  responsible  for  all  that  had  come,  or  was 
to  come.  But  if  he  did  beat  her,  and  make  her  black  and  blue 
— he  looked  capable  of  it — and  Mr.  Hamley  saw  the  bruises, 
and  asked  her  about  them  to-morrow,  what  should  she  say  to 
him  ?  Her  difficulties  were  really  very  great.  How  she  wished 
one  of  these  two  men  would  die  !  At  this  present  moment  she 
was  quite  indifferent  which  of  the  two,  so  long  as  she  was  free 
..  of  one. 

All  these  things  she  thought  in  the  moment  during  which 
she  stood  with  her  hands  clasped  in  each  other,  her  head  a  little 
bent  and  her  blue  eyes  looking  up  with  the  tenderest  sweetness 
into  Sydney's  angry  face. 

"  What  nonsense,  Syd  ! "  she  said,  creeping  up  to  him  and 
taking  hold  of  his  arms.  "  How  absurd  of  you  to  go  on  like 
this,  dear  !  If  I  had  not  said  yes,  and  pretended  that  I  would, 
what  would  have  become  of  me  ?  He  would  have  turned  me 
then  and  there  out  of  doors,  and  where  could  I  have  gone  ?  Your 
father  is  ruined,  and  you  cannot  give  me  a  home  ;  besides  it  is 
all  over  the  place  that  you  are  on  the  point  of  marrying  Miss 
Manley,  and  I  should  like  to  know  what  I  am  to  do ! " 

"  Starve,  rather  than  do  such  a  shameful  thing  as  this  ! "  cried 
Sydney  violently. 

"  Willingly,  if  you  will  starve  with  me,"  said  pretty  Dora 
amiably.  "  But  I  tell  you  Syd,  frankly,  if  you  marry  Julia 
Manley  for  money  I  will  marry  Mr.  Hamlep ;  so  now  you  know." 

"  Dora,  you  are  too  detestable  ! "  cried  Sydney.  "  You  seem 
to  forget  altogether  that  you  are  my  wife," 


THE  SHADOW  IN  THE  WOOD.  459 

"  Xo  I  do  not,  dear,"  she  answered.  "  I  remember  it  too 
well ;  for  it  makes  the  whole  thing  so  dreadfully  complicated. 
If  we  had  been  only  lovers  all  this  time  there  would  have  been 
nothing  to  be  afraid  of ;  but  it  will  be  a  horribly  awkward 
position  for  us  both  when  you  walk  out  of  the  church  with  Miss 
Mauley  on  your  arjp  as  your  wife,  and  we  go  out  to  our  bridal 
dinner-parties  afterwards.  We  shall  meet  at  some  of  them." 

"Oh,  Dora,  do  not  say  such  awful  things!"  cried  Sydney, 
fairly  writhing  under  her  words.  "  I  always  thought  you  had 
some  kind  of  feeling,  some  kind  of  sympathy.  You  will  send 
me  wild  if  you  go  on  like  this  !  " 

"  Well,  Syd,  you  are  the  most  extraordinarily  unreasonable 
person  I  have  ever  seen  !  "  said  Dora.      "  You  first  of  all  marry 
me  undertake  pretences;  then  you  discard  me,  and  are  going 
to  marry   somebody  else  ;  but  you  will  neither  hear  it  spoken 
of,  nor  let  me  secure  myself  from  ruin.     What  do  you  propose  ? 
or  have  you  anything  to  propose  at  all?" 
"  I  have,"  cried  Sydney. 
"Well?  what?" 

He  turned  away.  Sydney  Lowe  was  not  much  troubled  with 
conscientious  scruples  nor  moral  delicacy,  but  even  he  hesitated 
before  he  propounded  the  scheme  he  had  devised,  whereby  he 
should  take  all  the  infamy  on  himself  and  make  it  unnecessary 
for  Dora  to  imitate  him. 

"  .No,  Syd,"  said  Dora,  when  he  had  taken  the  bad  courage 
to  speak,  "  1  will  not  do  that.  We  are  in  an  awful  scrape,  but 
I  don't  think  that  would  make  it  much  better.  At  least  not 
for  me.  It  would  be  pleasant  enough  for  you;  but  for  myself 
— no  I  don't  see  it,  Syd  ! "  quite  gravely. 

"  And  you  prefer  that  low-lived  ruffian,  that  big  brute,  to 
me  ?  "  cried  Sydney,  savagely. 

"  No,  Syd,  1  don't.  I  loathe  and  hate  Mr.  Hamley,  and  you 
know  that  I  do  ;  and  I  love  you,  and  you  know  that  too.  I 
have  never  loved  any  man  but  you,  and  never  shall." 

Her  head  went  down  on  his  breast,  and  his  arms  were  round 
her  dainty  waist.  His  passion  changed  in  an  instant  to  despair, 
and  his  anger  to  a  woman's  grief. 

"  Oh,  Dora,  how  can  you  leave  me  ! "  he  sobbed.  '  It  breaks 
my  heart  to* think  of  it  when  it  does  nob  send  me  mad  ! " 

"  How  can  you  leave  me  ! "  she  retorted,  also  sobbing.  "  You 


46C  "  WHAT  worm  VOTT  no,  LOVE  ? 

are  going  to  be  married  now  at  once  ;  I  only  said  I  would  in  a 
year's  time,  to  keep  things  quiet  and  see  what  could  be  done. 
It  is  you,  not  I,  who  are  the  deserter." 

"  What  else  can  I  do,  darling  ? "  he  pleaded.  "  We  are 
ruined,  all  of  us,  unless  we  can  get  money,  and  I  know  of  no 
other  way  than  this." 

This  was  the  first  time  he  had  confessed  to  his  intention  ; 
and  it  brought  the  present  frightful  state  of  things  very  vividly 
before  Dora.  She  turned  away  and  shook  herself  free  from  his 
arms  :  but  if  the  movement  was  petulant  she  softened  its  harsh- 
ness by  sobbing  vehemently.  At  that  moment  she  hated  Mr. 
Hamley  and  loved  Sydney  to  distraction  ;  so  she  thought ;  and 
would  brave  everything  rather  than  give  him  up  to  Julia  Man- 
ley,  and  accept  the  bitter  portion  assigned  to  her  on  her  own 
side.  Her  tears  unmanned  him  more  than  ever.  He  clasped 
her  to  him  again,  frantically  crying — 

"  Dora  !  my  wife  !  my  own  little  wife !  I  cannot  give  you  up  ! 
Whatever  happens,  poverty  or  no  poverty,  let  us  keep  together 
and  make  the  best  of  things  as  we  have  them." 

"  I  will  if  you  will,"  said  Dora  between  her  sobs ;  and  then 
they  kissed  each  other  and  cried  afresh,  and  were  both  pro- 
foundly and  intensely  miserable.  They  knew  well  enough  that 
they  not  could  face  poverty,  but  none  the  more  did  they  wish  to 
part.  Selfishness,  deceit,  recklessness,  treachery,  crime — all  these 
lay  heaped  in  burning  flames  on  their  young  heads;  but  all  the 
same,  utterly  worthless  as  they  were,  they  loved  each  other  at 
the  moment  and  they  suffered.  It  soothed  them  to  cry  :  "  Let 
us^go  into  ruin  together,  so  long  as  we  are  together."  It  was  a 
deception  born  of  love  and  despair.  Each  recognised  the  de- 
ception in  that  deeper  reasonableness  which  passion  never  stirs 
in  some  people ;  but  it  was  a  sweet  if  passing  solace,  and  each 
thought  the  other  believed  in  it.- 

So  they  stood  there  in  the  shadow,  clasped  in  each  other's 
arms ;  Dora  crying  on  Sydney's  shoulder,  and  he  crying  over 
her  golden  head  too,  in  between  alternations  of  hope  and  misery, 
impossible  suggestions,  untenable  promises,  and  sometimes  blank 
confessions  of  necessities  ;  feeling  that  the  final  moment  had 
come,  and  that  the  calm  counsel  of  the  morning^would  show 
them  the  madness  of  the  night,  while  both  pretended  that  this 
madness  was  to  last  and  to  be  acted  on.  More  than  once,  how- 


THE  SHADOW  IN  THE  WOOD.  461 

ever,  Sydney  begged  her  to  forgive  him  for  the  •wrong  he  had 
done  her  so  unintentionally  in  marrying  her  ;  assuring  her — and 
here  he  spoke  the  truth — that  he  had  no  kind  of  knowledge  of 
his  father's  affairs  when  he  made  her  his  wife,  and  that  he 
thought  the  sole  hitch  was  that  father's  possible  refusal  to  accept 
her  as  a  daughter-in-law ;  and  Dora  assured  him — which  was 
not  the  truth — that  she  had  never  until  last  night  had  the  least 
idea  that  Mr.  Hamley  loved  her  or  regarded  her  as  other  than  a 
daughter.     Then  they  spoke  of  their  running  away  together, 
and  even  went  to  the  length  of  comparing  their  joint  posses- 
sions.    They  did  not  reckon  ten  pounds  between  them.     Mr. 
Hamley  paid  bills  to  any  amount  without  remark,  but  he  made 
no  allowances,  and  he  disapproved  of  ladies  possessing  much 
pocket-money ;  and  ten  pounds  was  but  a  small  sum  on  which 
to  begin  life  for  two  young  people  who  could  not  do  a  hand's 
turn  for  themselves.     On  which  they  kissed  each  other  again ; 
and  Dora  wept  as  she  had  never  wept  in  her  life  before  ;  and 
Sydney  felt  that  he  should  go  mad  or  do  something  hideous  and 
desperate  if  thii  kind  of  thing  went  on  much  longer.     He  was 
in  fact  wrought  up  to  that  pitch  of  fierce  excitement  wherein  a 
man  is  no  longer  master  of  himself,  where  consequences  are  not 
^!culated,  results  are  not  foreseen,  and  where  the  impulse  of 
•.  moment,  whatever  it  may  be — the  passion  that  lies  upper- 
.ust — must  be  obeyed ;  and  is  ;  because  reason,  conscience,  all 
that  renders  humanity  human,  has  gone  to  sleep  and  only  the 
animal  remains.     His  own  tears  maddened  him,  and  Dora's  dii- 
tress  but  added  to  his  madness.     A  voice  seemed  to  sound  in 
his  ear.  just  two  words  repeated  again  and  again,  "  Kill  him  I 
kill  him !  "  it  said ;  "  kill  him  !  kill  him ! " 

No  ways  and  means  presented  themselves  to  his  fancy,  nor 

when  nor  how  ;  only  the  impulse,  only  the  voice :  "  Kill  him ! " 

As  he  held  his  wife  strained  in  his  arms  as  in  a  vice,  she  felt 

his  heart  throb  against  her  bosom  while  he  groaned  with  a  kind 

of  angry  despair  that  was  scarcely  human. 

"  Sydney,"  she  said,  in  terror,  "  are  you  ill,  dear  t" 
He  made  no  answer,  and  as  the  last  breath  of  her  words  pawed 
over  his  cheek  they  heard  the  door  of  the  house  unbolted  and 
unbarred,  and  presently  a  man's  footstep  came  heavily  down  the 
broad  stone  flight  that  led  from  the  door,  and  on  to  the  gravel 
of  the  drive,  tiuuing  to  the  left  where  they  were  hidden. 


462 

Dora  clung  to  her  husband  in  terror.  There  was  no  danger 
of  her  sobbing  now. 

"  Mr.  Harnley  !  "  she  gasped. 

They  shrank  back  among  the  trees,  but  they  dared  not  gc 
very  deep  into  the  wood.  The  night  was  still,  when  sound 
travels  far,  and  the  crisp  fallen  leaves  would  have  betrayed 
them.  Sydney  grasped  the  heavily-loaded  life-preserver  he 
always  carried  with  him  in  these  midnight  expeditions — an  in- 
strument much  after  his  own  pattern,  slight  and  inoffensive  to 
look  at,  but  deadly  if  used  in  earnest — then  pressed  his  arm 
closer  round  Dora  and  whispered  to  her  hoarsely  not  to  be  afraid. 
But  she  was  even  the  more  afraid  for  his  very  words  ;  he  looked 
so  dark  and  deadly,  like  a  human  tiger  somehow. 

Her  mind  took  it  all  in  ;  discovery ;  the  men  struggling  to- 
gether and  one  of  them  badly  hurt ;  her  disgrace  ;  the  public 
scandal  and  the  open  shame ;  and  then  the  enforced  poverty 
after  all !  A  minute  ago  she  had  been  bewailing  her  hard  fate 
in  being  forced  to  separate  ;  now  she  shuddered  at  the  harder 
prospect  of  being  forced  to  keep  together. 

The  steps  came  nearer.  They  were  firm  and  heavy,  and  with 
them  they  heard  Mr.  Hamley's  voice,  sometimes  speaking  to  him- 
self, sometimes  breaking  out  into  a  few  false  notes  of  song,  and 
sometimes  laughing  softly  as  a  man  whose  hearb  is  too  full  of 
joy  for  thorough  self-containment  or  repose. 

He  crossed  the  broad  carriage-drive  and  came  along  the  walk 
that  skirted  the  croquet-lawn,  and  so  into  the  shrubbery  path 
where  hit  iiance'e  and  her  husband  were  hidden.  They  heard 
his  breathing  and  the  very  fret  of  his  watch-chain  as  he  passed. 

"  Dora  !  "  he  said  in  a  tone  of  such  abounding  love,  such  in- 
tensity of  passion,  that  Sydney  felt  the  blood  leap  like  fire  to 
his  face,  "  My  Dora !  my  wife  !  How  she  loves  me  !  Little 
angel,  how  devoted  she  is  to  me !  I  always  suspected  it — I 
knew  it — but  to  hear  her  say  it,  '  I  love  you  ! '  " — in  falsetto — 
"  Gad !  it  nearly  did  for  me  for  pleasure  !  Dora !  beauty  ! 
little  angel  !  how  I  love  you  ! " 

He  went  on  a  few  paces,  then  he  came  back  again,  singing 
softly  what  he  thought  was  one  of  Dora's  favourite  songs. 
And  then  he  sat  down  on  a  garden  chair  placed  so  close  to 
where  the  young  couple  stood  that  Dora  thought  he  must 
surely  hear  their  breathing  and  the  beating  of  her  guilty, 
frightened  heart. 


IN   THE  WOOD.  463 

"  What  hands  she  has  ! "  Mr.  Hamley  said  to  himself  after 
a  moment's  silence.  "  What  lips !  That  good-night  kiss  of 
hers — I  thought  I  should  have  turned  faint  and  lost  my  head  ! 
How  delightful  to  feel  her  soft  hair  and  her  velvety  cheeks — 
she  is  like  a  flower ;  and  she  is  my  own.  Dora  I  her  very  name 
is  the  prettiest  in  the  world.  Dora  Hamley !  They'll  say  in 
London  that  the  M.P.  for  Milltown  has  the  loveliest  little  wife 
in  England  ;  and  they'll  say  right.  Not  the  Queen  herself  can 
show  such  another  in  all  her  court!  And  to  think  of  that 
young  beast  Lowe,  presuming  so  high  !  The  wife  of  the  Mem- 
ber for  the  borough  of  Milltown  is  rather  a  cut  above  a  pro- 
fligate blackleg  and  his  son !  My  Dora ;  no  other  man's 
Dora  ;  only  mine  !  And  she  loves  me  so  much,  and  says  it  so 
prettily !  To  think  of  her  saving  herself  for  me  j  refusing  them 
all  because  she  loved  me  !  Jabez  Hamley,  you  are  a  happy 
man  to-night !  There's  not  a  happier  on  the  whole  face  of  the 
earth,  let  him  be  who  he  may !  " 

So  he  .went  on  talking  in  broken  interrupted  sentences  to 
himself ;  the  man's  heart  too  full  for  sleep,  too  rich  in  joy  for 
rest.  He  felt  as  if  he  should  have  been  suffocated  in  the  house, 
had  he  stayed  there.  He  had  that  strange  yearning  to  carry 
his  joy  into  the  infinity  of  nature  which  we  all  have,  even  the 
most  prosaic  of  us,  the  least  sensitive  and  refined,  when  our  cup 
is  very  full  and  the  gates  of  heaven  have  rolled  back  and  let 
us  in.  The  passion  of  happiness  that  possessed  him  was  almost 
more  than  he  could  bear,  and  he  came  out  into  the  fresh  night- 
air  to  throw  its  burden  on  to  something  stronger  and  holier 
than  himself. 

He  had  been  happy  before  this  ia  his  life  ;  indeed,  his  life 
had  been  singularly  blessed,  he  said  to  himself.  He  had  been 
prosperous  in  all  ways,  successful  on  all  points  of  his  ambition  ; 
but  he  had  never  felt  as  he  felt  now,  so  possessed  with  his  joy, 
so  overpowered  with  his  bliss.  He  had  to  keep  silence  to  all 
the  world  of  his  happiness  in  Dora.  To  the  outside  onlookers 
he  mnst  wear  crape  round  his  hat  and  a  sorrowful  countenance 
for  the  due  observance  of  the  decencies  ;  he  could  tell  his  secret 
to  none ;  but  like  the  man  who  must  whisper  what  he  knew  of 
the  king  to  the  reeds,  he  too  must  whisper  what  he  felt  to  the 
night.  It  was  very  un-English,  very  boyish,  but  it  was  nature. 
His  life  hitherto  had  been  arid  of  love.  He  had  married  early 


464  "  WHAT  worm  YOTT  TK>. 

for  ambition,  and  he  had  prudently  resolved  to  jnake  that 
marriage  a  success.  To  do  tins  he  had  not  suffered  his  fancy 
to  stray  to  the  right  or  the  left ;  and  his  very  love  for  Dora 
had  been  a  growth,  not  a  sudden  passion,  and  never  fully  con- 
fessed even  to  himself  in  its  intensity,  if  it  had  bee'n  in  its  hope, 
because  he  had  never  dared  to  indulge  in  it  till  now.  And  the 
first  love  of  a  man's  life  matured  at  nearly  fifty,  is  a  deeper  and 
more  absorbing  passion  than  even  the  most  fervid  fancy  of 
earlier  youth. 

He  did  not  sit  there  long,  though  it  seemed  like  an  age  to 
the  two  hidden  behind  the  trees  listening  to  his  boastful  glad- 
ness— the  one  in  such  chill  of  abject  terror,  the  other  in  such 
fire  of  torturing  rage.  Restless,  feverish,  with  his  chest  ex- 
panded and  his  head  held  high,  he  wandered  down  the  avenue, 
and  presently  they  heard  the  gate  leading  into  the  wood  from 
the  shrubbery  creak  as  it  swung  back,  and  the  last  .of  his  foot- 
steps died  away. 

Then  Sydney,  putting  Dora  from  him  without  a  word,  with- 
out a  sign,  turning  only  upon  her  a  pair  of  flaming  eyes  burn- 
ing like  fire  beneath  his  dark  brows, .  motioned  her  silently  to 
the  house  ;  while  he,  drawing  a  deep  breath,  shifted  his  loaded 
cane  to  a  yet  more  convenient  hold  in  the  middle,  and  set  off 
with  a  swift  and  stealthy  pace  down  the  avenue. 

"  Sydney  ! "  whispered  Dora. 

But  he  was  gone.  Keeping  in  the  shadow  of  the  trees,  and 
with  that  light  walk  of  his  which  he  had  practised  so  often  and 
which  was  scarcely  more  noisy  than  the  tread  of  a  panther,  she 
could  neither  see  nor  hear  him ;  and  after  lingering  for  a  mo- 
ment, she  too  turned  and  ran,  and  was  coon  safe  in  her  own 
room,  unseen  and  unsuspected.  No  one  who  had  seen  her  fair 
pretty  face  half  an  hour  after,  nestled  among  the  lace  and  linen  of 
her  luxurious  pillow,  sleeping  as  tranquilly  as  a  child,  her 
cheeks  just  touched  with  a  pink  flush  like  a  monthly  rose,  her 
small  hand  half-hidden  among  her  golden  hair,  would  have 
imagined  that  she  had  just  escaped  from  one  danger  to  herself, 
while  leaving  in  the  thick  of  peril  the  two  men  who  loved  her. 
She  was  of  the  tribe  felis  femina,  not  cruel  of  nature  if  she  was 
of  need,  and  preferring  her  own  ease  before  all  other  things 
above  or  below. 

Still  softly  singing  to  himself,  Mr.  Hamley_ walked  on  through 


TH1  SHADOW  IN  THE  WOOD.  465 

the  little  wood,  which  when  he  first  bought  Abbey  Holme  was 
the  boundary  of  his  possessions.  He  had  a  special  love  for  this 
tangled  thicket :  it  was  pretty  and  picturesque,  with  a  pleasant 
trout-stream  running  through,  broadening  into  a  fair  expanse  of 
water  where  he  kept  a  couple  of  swans  and  some  favourite  fowl 
He  remembered  how  glad  he  was,  years  ago,  when  he  walked 
through  this  very  path  and  took  possession  of  the  wood  as  mas-  ' 
ter  and  owner.  He  had  often  stolen  over  the  fences  and  got 
nuts  and  blackberries  there  in  his  ragged  days  ;  he  took  care 
that  no  ragged  urchins  stole  over  the  fences  now  for  nuts  or 
blackberries  ! — and  he  remembered  his  proud  de''  _ht  in  finding 
himself  the  lawful  master  of  his  former  filched  Paradise.  It 
was  eighteen  years  ago.  How  time  had  passed  and  prospered 
with  him  since  then  !  Year  by  year  he  had  gathered  more,  and 
year  by  year  he  would  gather  more  still.  His  wealth  had  got 
to  that  point  when  it  increases  by  itself;  for  spend  as  much  as 
he  could — that  is,  as  much  as  he  cared  to  spend — he  could  not 
get  through  all  his  income.  He  had  that  Cragfoot  estate  to  get 
in  yet,  he  thought ;  and  maybe  more  land  might  come  into  the 
market,  which  he  would  secure.  There  were  outlying  bits  he 
was  beginning  to  covet,  and  that  he  thought  would  fit  in  well 
with  his  fields ;  but  for  these  he  could  afford  to  wait. 

He  was  glad  about  Cragfoot  though.  He  would  make  it  a 
Dower-house  for  Dora.  Had  Patricia  Kemball  been  a  sensible 
girl  and  done  as  she  ought  to  have  done  in  her  aunt's  lifetime, 
he  would  have  made  over  the  whole  concern  to  her  as  her  por- 
tion ;  now  he  would  give  it  to  Dora,  and  call  it  "Dora's  Dower," 
as  a  remembrance.  He  laughed  right  out  when  he  thought  of 
this.  It  would  be  a  pleasant  revenge  on  that  young  profligate 
who  had  dared  to  ask  him  for  Dora's  band  ! 

How  beautiful  the  night  was  !*  The  scented  autumn  air  hang- 
ing in  a  light  vapour  that  shone  like  silver  among  the  tre««, 
veiling  the  direct  brilliancy  of  the  moon  and  softening  it  into  a 
general  atmosphere  of  mild  radiance  rather  than  a  specialised 
light,  seemed  more  delightful  to  him  than  he  had  ever  known 
an  October  night  to  be,  or  indeed,  any  night  of  any  year.  It 
was  quite  summer-like  he  thought,  as  he  took  off  his  hat  and 
flung  back  his  coat,  looking  about  him.  He  had  got  now  to  tho 
Oval ;  a  cleared  space  by  the  side  of  the  lake,  as  the  broadened 
reach  of  river  was  called ;  and  stood  thew  bareheaded  in  tho 
DD 


466  <>  WHAT  WOHLH  yon  DO,  LOVE?" 

moonlight, watching  the  white  swans  floating  lazily  on  the  water. 
His  back  was  towards  the  house,  the  chimneys  of  which  could 
be  seen  over  the  tops  of  the  trees  in  daylight. 

Watching  the  swans,  something  in  their  graceful  gliding 
movement  struck  the  imagination  of  the  man  Avhose  very  soul 
seemed  transformed  to-night.  It  was  the  whiteness  of  Dora, 
•the  grace  of  Dora,  the  caressing,  subtle  charm  of  Dora,  the 
purity  of  Dora.  He  saw  her  everywhere  ;  earth  and  heaven 
and  all  forms  of  loveliness  were  filled  with  her,  and  everything 
was  but  a  type — a  repetition  of  her  excellence  and  beauty. 

"  My  Dora  !  "  he  said  aloud.  Then,  with  a  sudden  rush  of 
feeling,  the  like  of  which  he  had  never  known  before,  he  cried 
out  as  if  in  an  ecstasy  ;  "  Thank  God  for  her  love  ! " 

A  whistling  noise  as  a  stick  cut  sharply  through  the  air,  the 
crash  of  breaking  bone,  a  stifled  cry,  a  heavy  fall,  and  Mr.  Ham- 
ley's  life  was  over ;  his  love,  his  joy,  his  prosperity,  his  vain- 
glory, nothing  more  now  than  a  handful  of  dust  fanned  by  the 
midnight  air — the  thought  of  a  man  which  had  passed  like  a 
summer's  cloud.  Had  his  death  been  by  any  other  method,  had 
his  heart  burst  in  his  great  joy,  had  he  died  by  the  visitation 
of  God  or  by  a  thunderbolt  from  Heaven,  one  would  have  said 
that  he  had  died  at  the  right  moment.  To-morrow  the  ecstasy 
which  had  lifted  him  to-night  beyond  himself  would  have  with- 
ered down  into  the  vulgar  narrowness  of  his  everyday  life  ;  his 
soul,  which  had  expanded  into  poetry,  would  have  shrunk  back 
into  its  old  groove  of  ignoble  ostentation^  of  insolent  self-asser- 
tion ;  and  his  very  love  for  Dora  would  by  time  have  become 
first  the  mere  pride  of  possession,  then  indifference,  and  perhaps 
have  ended  in  jealousy  and  estrangement.  He  would  never 
have  been  so  great  again,  so  near  to  nobleness  as  he  was  to- 
night ;  for  thought  the  cause  of  his  passionate  emotion  was  a 
cheat,  his  feeling  was  true.  The  tragedy  by  which  all  was  over 
for  him  in  life  was  a  foul  and  cruel  crime,  but  it  gave  him  a 
pathos  he  would  never  have  had  else,  and  crystallized  for  ever 
the  dignity  and  sublimer  passion  of  the  hour. 

As  Mr.  Hamley  fell  a  slight  young  figure  shot  quickly  by  ; 
plunged  again  into  the  shadow  of  the  wood ;  leaped  wall  and 
fence  and  gate,  going  always  by  circuitous  paths  till  it  struck 
the  high  road,  where  running  still,  always  keeping  in  the  shadow, 
Sydney  Lowe  soon  gained  the  shelter  df  his  own  home  as  en- 


THE  SHADOW   IN   THE  WOOD.  467 

tirely  unsuspected  and  undiscovered  as  Dora  had  been.  Creep- 
ing noiselessly  up-stairs,  he  went  into  his  private  room ;  carefully 
examined  his  clothes  whence  iie  removed  certain  damning  stains 
and  spots  ;  stirred  up  the  dying  embers  of  the  fire,  and  burned 
in  the  flame  a  heavilyloaded  life-preserver,  running  the  lead 
through  a  bullet-mould,  as  he  had  often  done  when  a  boy. 
And  then  he  went  to  bed,  where  he  laid  as  if  in  an  ague  fit  till 
the  morning.  He  had  obeyed  that  haunting  voice,  and  com- 
mitted the  crime  he  had  been  half-unconsciously  meditating  for 
many  weeks,  and  now  stood  face  to  face  with  the  consequences. 
His  chance  of  detection  ?  It  all  depended  on  whether  he  had 
been  seen  or  not,  or  if  seen  recognised.  And  if  seen  and  re- 
cognised, what  then  was  he  to  do  1 

He  lay  there  calculating,  inventing,  his  brain  on  fire,  his 
thoughts  incoherent  in  their  activity,  half  resolving  to  leave 
the  place  and  England  to-morrow,  then  again  feeling  that  his 
only  policy  was  to  remain  and  trust  to  his  good  stars  and  his 
own  cleverness,  should  suspicion  arise  and  his  name  get  bruited 
abroad.  And  while  he  was  torturing  himself  with  the  crimi- 
nal's coward  fears,  James  Garth  was  making  his  way  too,  fr<Jm 
the  wood,  carrying  a  bagfull  of  game  which  he  had  just  netted 
in  the  preserves.  Not  half  an  hour  before  Mr.  Hamley  came 
to  the  Oval,  he  had  passed  through  the  paths  with  his  snares, 
and  had  lifted  what  his  last  night's  setting  had  brought  him. 

For  Garth  had  turned  poacher  of  late  days,  more  as  an  act  of 
revenge  than  for  any  other  reason.  It  pleased  the  man's  savage 
feeling  to  rob  Mr.  Hamley,  who  he  always  said  had  robbed 
him.  It  was  his  crude  version  of  the  law  which  gives  an  eye  for 
an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth  ;  and  he  helped  himself  pretty 
freely.  More  than  once  the  head-keeper  had  warned  him. 
They  had  been  old  friends  in  the  days  when  James  held  his 
father's  land,  and  he  did  not  want  to  be  hard  on  him.  Still, 
his  duty  was  to  watch  the  game,  and  let  no  man  meddle  with 
it ;  and  so  he  said  ;  and  each  time  he  had  it  to  say  he  spoke 
more  sternly  than  before.  He  had  been  about  the  preserves 
to-night  as  usual,  and  had  seen  a  figure  come  out  of  the  littl* 
wood  and  run  across  the  open  in  the  moonlight  for  a  moment, 
then  dart  under  cover  again.  It  was  a  younger,  slighter  look- 
ing man  than  Garth,  it  seemed  to  him,  and  evidently  carrying 
nothing  weighty.  But  there  was  not  much  doubt  in  hit  own 


468  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

mind  that  he  had  made  a  mistake,  and  that  it  was  Garth  whom 
he  had  seen,  when  all  the  circumstances  came  to  light  ;  for 
who  else  was  it  possible  to  have  been  1  When  he  and  the  un- 
der-gamekeeper,  making  their  rounds  the  next  day,  came  upon 
the  stiff  body  of  their  murdered  master  lying  in  the  Oval  with 
his  skull  battered  in  by  one  tremendous  blow  given  from  be- 
hind, and  a  piece  of  white  spotted  blue  bandana  hanging  on  one 
of  the  bushes  near,  the  man's  heart  stood  still  ;  for  he  recog- 
nised the  neckerchief  as  the  one  James  Garth  habitually  wore, 
and  the  whole  crime  became  clear. 

"  Whosever  throat  this  fits  has  done  it,"  said  the  under- 
gamekeeper  pointing  to  the  bush  ;  and  the  police^  when  they 
were  sent  for,  said  BO  too. 

And  what  excuse  could  Garth  maket  There,  under  his 
bed,  was  the  bag  of  game ;  round  his  neck  the  torn  bandana, 
with  its  missing  piece  found  on  the  bushes  close  to  where  Mr. 
Hamley  was  lying  murdered.  There  was  no  denial  ot  the  one 
fact,  and  the  inference  was  too  strong  to  be  gainsaid.  The 
poacher  wa*  arrested  on  suspicion,  committed  on  the  capital 
charge,  and  sent  to  jail  to  stand  his  trial  at  the  coming  assize, 
Milltown  having  but  one  mind  on  the  matter — that  he  was 
guilty.  For  again  and  again  they  asked  who  else  could  have 
done  it  ?  Mr.  Hamley  was  not  the  beloved  of  all  men,  but  he 
had  no  enemies  save  this  gloomy,  discontented  peasant  whose 
land  he  had  bought,  and  whom  he  had  thus  made  his  foe  for 
life — and  death. 


TRUTH  AND  SEEMING.  469 


CHAPTER  XLIL 

TRUTH  AND  SEEMING. 

is  nothing  of  which  a  poacher  is  not  capable. 
Given  a  pair  of  hands  bold  enough  to  set  snares  for  the 
squire's  game,  and  you  have  a  heart  black  enough  to 
compass  the  squire's  murder.  This  is  a  logical  sequence  in  the 
minds  of  the  landed  gentry,  and  they  act  on  it  when  they  have 
the  chance  with  singular  uniformity  of  feeling.  A  poacher  is 
the  common  enemy  of  all  men  with  game  preserves  ;  and  they 
think  they  do  the  community  good  service  by  getting  rid  of 
him  on  any  pretext  that  will  serve. 

Whether  it  is  he  who  is  intrir-sically  bad,  or  the  law  which 
makes  him  so,  does  not  trouble*them.  Men  in  possession  are 
not  given  to  abstract  reasoning,  the  first  principles  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  Acts  of  Parliament.  To  break  the  law  has  an 
ugly  sound  with  it  to  those  whose  gain  is  to  keep  it,  and  prac- 
tical protest  against  inequitable  decrees  is  a  crime  where  read- 
justment would  pare  off  some  of  the  golden  fringes  from  the 
rich  man's  garments  to  give  decent  clothing  to  the  poor.  So 
it  is  that  a  poacher  has  but  hard  measure  meted  out  to  him  at 
the  hands  of  magisterial  game  preservers ;  and  class  enmity, 
always  bitter,  is  never  more  so  than  when  it  has  to  deal  with  a 
man  who  has  snared  a  pheasant  or  netted  a  salmon  by  the 
right  of  nature,  and  against  the  game  law. 

Thus,  when  it  became  known  that  James  Garth  had  taken 
to  poaching,  his  arrest  on  a  charge  of  murder  was  quite  in  the 
order  of  things.  Discontent  and  springs  together  make  an 
amalgam  that  renders  the  worst  crime  of  all  easy ;  and  the  poor 
fellow  was  condemned  long  before  he  was  tried.  When  that 
conclusive  bit  of  white-spotted  blue  banrtuna  was  compared 
with  the  yoeman's  neckerchief  and  found  to  correspond  with 
the  torn  end,  there  was  then  not  the  shadow  of  doubt  left,  nor 
the  chance  of  escape.  The  whole  thing  fitted  in  piece  by  piece 


470  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

with  as  much  accuracy  as  those  two  ends  of  torn  silk ;  and  the 
hypothesis  was  as  clear  as  demonstrated  fact. 

Garth  had  been  poaching ;  Mr.  Hamley,  suspecting  some- 
thing, or  perhaps  only  restless  from  grief  at  the  loss  of  his 
wife,  had  gone  out  into  the  wood  and  had  caught  him  in  the 
fact.  There  had  been  an  altercation  ;  and  Garth,  being  ordered 
off,  had  gone  sullenly  away,  when  he  had  turned,  and  creeping 
noiselessly  behind  his  detector  had  struck  him  on  the  back  of 
the  head  with  some  round,  heavy  instrument,  and  so  had  killed 
him  treacherously  on  the  spot.  Nothing  could  be  clearer. 
The  game  was  found  under  his  bed,  and  the  gamekeeper,  his 
own  friend,  had  seen  him  running  across  the  open.  He  had 
not  known  him  at  first ;  at  least  not  for  certain  in  the  shimmery 
moonlight ;  the  man  he  had  seen  looked  younger  and  of  lighter 
build,  he  said,  and  he  had  not  taken  him  to  be  his  old  friend 
and  mate  ;  but  enlightened  by  after  events  he  reconsidered  and 
corrected  his  first  impression,  and  was  prepared  now  to  main- 
tain, sadly  enough,  that  it  was  James  Garth,  and  none  other, 
whom  he  had  seen  escaping  from  the  place  of  murder.  For 
you  see,  said  the  man,  as  all  Milltown  said  in  concert,  who  else 
could  it  be  ? 

All  the  bitter  words  Garth  had  said,  all  his  discontent  and 
angry  despair.  Mrs.  Garth's  loud-voiced  passion  at  the  dismissal 
of  her  daughter,  every  small  and  until  now  half-forgotten  in- 
cideut,  and  specially  that  scene  where  he  had  had  that  kind  of 
fit.  and  had  cried  "Murder!  "  at  the  Long  Field  Gate  came 
back  to  the  memories  of  those  who  had  heard  and  seen.  And 
then  that  torn  fragment  of  bandana  !  It  was  a  small  thing  on 
which  to  hang  a  man  ;  but  it  hanged  him  nevertheless.  All 
saw  in  it  the  finger  of  Providence,  which  forces  a  man  who 
commits  a  crime  to  leave  some  betraying  sign  by  which  the  old 
saying  ttn't  murder  will  out  may  be  justified  ;  and  the  finger 
of  Providence  was  accepted  as  a  guide  pointing  in  the  right 
direction  in  this  instance. 

A  proved  poacher;  confessedly  out  in  the  preserves  on  the 
night  of  the  murder1 ;  seen  escaping  from  near  the  very  spot  by 
his  friend  the  gamekeeper,  a  reluctant  if  honest  witness  ;  and 
with  a  fragment  of  his  neckerchief  found  fluttering  in  the 
bushes  close  to  the  spot — what  could  save  him  1  Not  the  ab- 
seiice  of  the  instrument  with  which  the  deed  was  done ;  though 


TRUTH  AND  SEEMING.  471 

the  woods  were  searched  far  and  near  for  something  that  would 
fit  into  that  awful  wound ;  not  his  own  protestation  of  innocence 
made  once  and  never  repeated,  for  he  became  sullen  on  the 
trial  and  stood  as  if  he  did  not  care  which  way  the  verdict 
went ;  not  his  previous  good  character,  seeing  that  even  good 
men  may  lapse  and  that  no  saint  is  sure ;  not  even  the  current 
rumour  that  his  brain  was  touched,  for  the  jail  surgeon  certified 
his  perfect  sanity  ;  nothing  that  could  be  urged  had  any  weight 
in  face  of  the  overwhelming  force  of  the  circumstantial  evidence 
brought  against  him,  backed  by  the  hypothesis  born  of  his 
notorious  enmity  and  discontent. 

He  was  tried ;  well  defended  j  but  found  guilty  all  the  same  ; 
and  sentenced  to  be  hanged  by  the  judge  in  an  impressive  speech 
which  lost  its  point  so  far  as  the  prisoner  was  concerned,  from 
the  simple  fact  that  he  had  not  done  that  thing  for  which  he 
was  exhorted  to  repent  and  condemned  to  die.  But  it  moved 
the  judge  who  delivered  it  and  the  audience  who  heard  it,  and 
indeed  was  a  fine  bit  of  eloquence  full  of  good,  honest  human 
feeling. 

After  sentence  was  passed,  a  petition  headed  by  Dr.  Fletcher, 
but  sparsely  signed  by  the  rest  of  the  community,  was  forward- 
ed to  the  Home  Secretary  praying  for  commutation  of  the  cap- 
ital sentence.  The  petitioners  were  either  those  few  who  did 
not  believe,  in  spite  of  appearances  and  no  one  else  possible, 
that  James  had  done  this  murder — those  half  superstitious  and 
wholly  unreasonable  people  who  have  more  faith  in  character 
than  in  circumstantial  evidence ;  or  those  kindly  apologists  who 
believed  that  he  had  done  it  sure  enough,  but  who  thought  him 
mad  and  therefore  not  responsible.  But  the  Home  Secretary 
was  a  strong  man,  and  returned  the  memorial  with  the  answer 
,  that  he  saw  no  reason  to  interfere  with  the  regular  course  of 
justice.  The  prisoner  had  had  a  fair  trial,  and  the  laws  must 
be  obeyed. 

'i  here  was  no  help  for  it  then.  In  heaven  there  might  be  a 
re-arrangement  of  the  sentence,  but  on  earth  it  was  final ;  and 
James  Garth  was  hanged  within  the  precincts  of  the  county 
jail ;  his  last  words,  while  Calcraft  was  arranging  the  drop,  be- 
ing "  Gentlemen,  I  am  innocent !  "  as  he  lifted  his  wan  face  to 
the  lightand  looked  as  abrave  man  does  when  hemeets  an  ignoble 
<|oom  nobly.  But  all  the  thinking  and  educated  people  of  Mill- 


472  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

town  said  he  richly  deserved  his  fate.  All  save  Henry  Fletch- 
er ;  whose  defence  however  had  done  the  poor  fellow  no  kind  of 
good,  and  himself  that  amount  of  harm  which  comes  from  the 
open  expression  of  unpopular  opinions.  The  gentry  took  grave 
exception  at  this  continual  advocacy  of  the  poor  characteristic 
of  him.  They  said,  bitterly,  that  it  did  not  signify  what  a  com- 
mon man  did,  if  it  would  only  injure  and  annoy  the  rich  that 
mad  fellow  was  on  his  side.  They  might  all  have  their  throats 
cut,  and  he  would  move  heaven  and  earth  to  get  the  interest- 
ing criminal  off,  without  a  thought  for  the  victim.  It  was  in- 
famous, disgusting,  and  he  ought  to  be  drummed  out  of  society 
for  it. 

No  one  was  so  indignant  as  Colonel  Lowe  ;  though  to  make 
amends  no  one  was  so  silent  as  his  son.  The  Colonel  liked 
Henry  Fletcher  well  enough,  he  said,  as  they  all  knew ;  and  he 
had  always  disliked  that  poor  Hamley  fellow,  as  also  they  all 
knew ;  and  he  had  never  concealed  his  contempt  for  him  nor 
kowtowed  to  him  as  the  rest  had  done  ;  but  when  it  came  to 
taking  sides  with  his  murderer — good  heavens  !  that  was  an- 
other matter.  A  gentleman  may  keep  aloof  from  a  vulgar  up- 
start and  yet  not  hold  with  the  ruffian  whfc  has  assassinated 
him  in  his  own  grounds.  A  petition  for  a  reprieve  ?  No  !  If 
Garth  could  be  hanged  twice  over  the  punishment  would  not  be 
more  than  he  deserved  ;  and  he,  Colonel  Lowe,  would  vote  for 
the  second  drop.  What  would  become  of  the  country  if  such 
crimes  as  these  were  winked  at  ?  No.;  none  of  these  sentimen- 
talities suited  the  Colonel.  Gag  such  mischievous  demagogues 
as  Henry  Fletcher  ;  let  Garth  swing ;  and  above  all  things  de- 
fend the  majesty  of  the  law  and  keep  up  the  due  subordination 
of  classes. 

So  Garth  did  swing,  and  no  living  soul  knew  the  real  truth 
but  one — he  who  had  burnt  a  slight  cane  in  the  h're  one  Octo- 
ber night,  and  run  a  lump  of  lead  through  a  bullet  mould.  And 
no  living  soul  suspected  the  truth  but  one  — she  who  had  seen 
her  husband  steal,  with  his  panther-like  tread,  on  the  traces  of 
her  lover  in  the  shadow  of  the  wood,  and  who  knew  what  was 
in  his  heart. 

After  this  a  subscription  was  got  up  for  Garth's  widow  and 
orphans,  aud  they  were  shipped  off  to  Australia,  as  creatures 
too  tainted  for  the  purity  of  Milltowu.  They  were  the  victims 


TRUTH  AND  SEEMING.  473 

of  circumstances,  as  so  many  of  us  are ;  martyrs  crushed  under 
the  wheels  of  that  tremendous  car  where  sits  the  Justice  of  the 
World  \  the  helpless  struck  down  by  the  blind ;  sinless  Cains 
bearing  the  brand  unrighteously,  but  none  the  less  shunned  of 
men  because  of  that  unrighteousness.  It  had  been  a  frightful 
page  in  Milltown  history  ;  there  had  never  been  such  a  one  be- 
fore ;  and  the  citizens  felt  the  best  thing  to  do  was  to  obliter- 
ate the  last  traces  as  quickly  as  possible,  and  wipe  out  the  name 
of  Garth  from  the  annals  of  the  place. 

When  Mr.  Hamley  died  and  was  buried,  his  will  was  read ; 
and  Dora  Drummond  was  proved  his  heiress.  He  had  made 
it  hastily — a  mere  codicil  of  a  few  words — the  very  day  before 
he  was  murdered,  poor  man  !  as  if  he  had  had  a  prevision  of 
his  fate,  they  said,  with  pale  cheeks.  Nothing  touched  the 
public  imagination  more  than  this.  There  was  a  pathos,  almost 
a  poetry  in  the  action  that  counted  much  in  the  general  indict- 
ment against  Garth ;  and  the  popular  feeling  ran  high  in  favour 
of  the  murdered  member  for  a  disposition  of  his  effects  which 
betokened  such  a  generous  and  fatherly  interest  in  his  young 
relative. 

Thus  Dora  came  into  absolute  possession  of  everything  un- 
trammelled by  a  gingle  condition.  No  guardian,  no  trustee  had 
been  appointed ;  nothing  but  her  own  sovereign  will  to  admin- 
ister and  distribute  all  this  immense  fortune.  She  was  the  mis- 
tress of  Abbey  Holme  and  of  the  whole  estate ;  the  richest 
woman  for  miles  round ;  before  whose  wealth  poor  Julia  Man- 
ley's  hundred  thousand  pounds  shrank  into  insignificance,  and 
to  whom  rumour  gave  even  more  than  she  had. 

It  was  marvellous  to  see  how  beautiful  and  beloved  she  be- 
came all  at  once  to  Milltown  ;  how  much  every  one  suddenly 
found  out  she  had  been  always  admired  and  liked  ;  and  how 
each  person  claimed  to  have  specially  discerned  her  worth,  and 
valued  it,  in  the  bygone  years.  Not  a  house  failed  in  its  sym- 
pathetic respect  for  the  young  heiress,  and  the  Countess  of 
Dovedale  was  among  the  earliest  condolers.  Perhaps  she  gave 
a  half  rueful  thought  to  Lady  Maud  who  accompanied  her ;  at 
any  rate,  that  young  noblewoman  imagined,  as  Patricia  had  so 
often  done  in  her  past  world,  that  her  future  mother-in-law  had 
a  headache,  and  had  best  be  left  to  herself  during  the  d-ive. 
When  they  had  deposited  their  cards  and  driven  away,  my  lady 


474  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

epoke  of  Miss  Drummond  quite  warmly.  She  was  so  perfectly 
well-bred,  she  said ;  and  such  a  lovely  creature  !  She  must  be 
fabulously  rich — too  rich  indeed  for  a  woman ;  and  she,  the 
Countess,  hoped  she  would  marry  soon,  and  marry  well.  It  was 
too  heavy  a  responsibility  for  such  a  young  and  lovely  creature 
as  she  was  ;  she  ought  to  marry  into  a  good  family  where  there 
was  a  sensible  mother — a  woman  of  the  world  who  could  guide 
and  direct  her — and  where  her  .money  would  do  good  and  be 
the  means  of  exalting  herself ;  one  of  the  aristocracy,  in  short. 
To  which  Lady  Maud  answered  tranquilly  ;  yes,  she  ought,  and 
perhaps  under  the  Countess's  wing  and  her  own,  when  she 
should  be  Lady  Merrian,  she  would. 

All  these  kindly  speculations  however,  were  soon  set  at  rest  ; 
and  in  a  very  short  time  it  became  known  that  Dora  Drum- 
mond was  going  to  marry  young  Sydney  Lowe.  People  of 
course  found  fault  with  her  choice  and  ridiculed  her  taste,  and 
cried  what  a  pity  !  to  each  other  when  they  met  in  the  market- 
place ;  but  a  few  of  the  robuster  kind — those  whose  wealth- 
worship  nothing  could  chill  nor  shock — affected  to  have  known 
of  this  attachment  from  the  beginning,  and  to  find  it  an  ex- 
quisite instance  of  human  constancy.  To  be  sure,  there  were 
a  few  awkward  whispers  about  Julia  Manley  ;  for  the  Colonel, 
to  clinch  the  decision  he  had  good  reason  to  consider  wavering, 
had  told  every  one  exultingly  of  his  son's  engagement  to  this 
young  lady,  whose  excellences  he  had  vaunted  in  almost  poetic 
terms.  Now,  within  twelve  hours  of  the  reading  of  Mr.  Ham- 
ley's  will,  an  occasion  was  found  for  a  rupture  between  the 
lovers  ;  and  though  Julia  humbled  herself,  poor  soul,  to  that 
point  where  submission  ends  and  degradation  begins,  she  could 
not  soften  her  angry  idol.  He  definitively  and  somewhat 
coarsely  broke  with  her  for  ever ;  and  the  heart-broken  crea- 
ture fled  away  with  her  thousands  and  her  sorrows  into  Corn- 
wall, where  she  established  herself  in  a  mining  town,  embraced 
Wesleyanism.  and  became  a  thorn  in  the  side  of  the  Broad 
Church  clergymen. 

Dora  and  Sydney  married  quite  soon  after  all  these  stirring 
events.  The  world  said  she  was  right.  She  was  too  young  to 
live  alone,  and  though  Mr.  Hainley  had  made  her  his  heiress, 
and  she  owed  all  imaginable  respect  to  his  memory  he  had  nob 
been  a  near  relative ;  and,  considering  all  the  circumstances  she 


TKUTH  AND   SEEMING.  475 

need  not  -wait  long.  Indeed  in  view  of  these  circumstances  she 
need  not  have  waited  long  had  he  been  her  father.  A  quiet 
marriage  giving  her  a  companion  and  protector  was  far  the  best 
tiling  for  her;  and  they  applauded  her  decision.  A  month 
after  that  melancholy  murder  then,  she  was  united  to  Sydney 
Lowe,  very  quietly  and  without  parade.  Colonel  and  Mrs. 
Lowe  were  the  only  people  at  the  wedding,  Patricia  Kemball 
refusing  to  be  bridesmaid.  But  the  bride  was  dressed  in  white, 
with  a  long  lace  veil,  ail  the  same  as  if  the  wedding  had  been 
one  according  to  conventional  rule,  having  no  other  meaning 
attached  to  it. 

For  oiie  thing  she  was  greatly  blamed  by  all  sensible  people, 
her  gross  imprudence  in  having  no  settlements.  It  was  a 
curious  bit  of  irony  that  Mr.  Hamley's  wealth  should  pass  un- 
conditionally into  the  hands  of  Sydney  Lowe,  but  the  world  is 
full  of  such.  Mr.  Simpson  urged  her  to  secure  at  leasfc  some- 
thing ;  and  even  the  Colonel,  not  planning  villany,  thought  she 
would  do  well  to  have  her  own  dower  properly  assured  ;  but 
Sydney  said  he  would  marry  no  woman  on  earth  with  settle- 
ments ;  and  after  a  private  conversation  with  Dora,  she  gave  in, 
and  his  will  triumphed  as  the  man's  should,  he  said.  No  one 
suspected  the  root  of  this  imprudent  arrangement ;  and  Syd- 
ney got  great  credit  for  generosity  in  making  a  post-nuptial 
settlement  which  assured  Dora  a  fair  share  of  her  own  wealth. 
For  the  rest,  he  made  no  bad  use  of  her  money.  Indeed  he  be- 
came rather  close-listed  than  otherwise,  responsibility  seeming 
to  have  worked  a  radical  change  in  him  somehow,  and  to  have 
even  gone  beyond  the  point  of  steadying  him.  He  released 
Cragfoot,  paid  off  his  father's  debts,  and  set  him  on  his  legs 
again  ;  but  he  told  him  sternly  that  this  was  the  only  thing  he 
would  do  for  him,  and  that  if  he  fell  into  the  mire  again  he 
might  pick  himself  out  the  best  way  he  could.  He  was  as  little 
like  the  old  Syd,  now  that  he  had  money,  as  was  the  law-re- 
specting king  like  the  law-breaking  prince.  He  was  gloomy, 
stern,  morosely  pious,  would  keep  no  society,  and  of  frightfully 
irritable  nerves.  His  health  broke  suddenly,  and  he  was  soon 
startled,  soon  made  angry  and  uneasy.  He  had  a  listening  look 
about  his  eyes  that  struck  people  as  odd,  and  he  hated  to  hear 
the  names  of  Hamley  or  G-arth.  People  said  he  drank  in  pri- 
vate -t  some  that  he  ate  opium ;  others  that  he  gambled.  A 


476  "  "WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

thousand  reasons  were  whispered  from  one  to  the  other  to  ac- 
count for  this  extraordinary  change  in  him ;  and  none  hit  the 
truth.  For  so  far  from  any  such  vice  as  secret  drinking  or  drug- 
ging, he  seemed  afraid  to  trust  his  senses  into  the  keeping  of 
any  one  or  anything  but  himself,  and  always  slept  with  locked 
doors,  and  a  loaded  pistol  lying  handy. 

He  and  Dora  got  on  together  pretty  well,  judging  by  ap- 
pearances ;  which  were  fallacious.  She  was  too  well  trained 
in  the  way  of  concealment  to  show  him  what  she  suspected  or 
the  world  what  she  felt ;  nevertheless  she  often  cried  in  secret, 
and  wished  she  had  never  known  Sydney  Lowe,  and  that  she 
was  once  more  under  the  Hamley  rule.  She  had  but  exchanged 
masters ;  and  of  the  two  her  husband's  hand  was  the  heavier. 

She  got  a  small  amount  of  feminine  consolation  however,  in 
the-  quiet  impertinence  with  which  she  treated  the  Colonel  and 
Mrs.  Lowe.  Once  she  had  courted  them  by  all  her  pretty  arts 
in  vain ;  now  they  were  obsequious  to  her,  while  she  snubbed 
them  with  merciless  good-breeding,  and  made  them  regret  that 
they  had  not  had  enough  prophetic  insight  to  have  secured  her 
when  they  might,  and  before  she  had  become  publicly  a  prize. 
This  was  their  judgment  of  affairs  :  and  it  was  as  false  as  all 
the  rest. 

On  the  whole  then,  the  Abbey  Holme  household,  though  a 
failure  and  a  wreck  if  judged  of  by  truth  and  principle,  was 
sufficiently  well  ordered  for  outward  purposes.  True,  Dora 
lost  her  beauty,  and  became  old  and  haggard  suddenly,  with  a 
scared  look  in  her  eyes  that  seemed  the  reflection  of  her  hus- 
band's abiding  expression  of  listening  and  watching ;  but  she 
was  always  graceful  and  conciliating  to  her  world  on  those  rare 
occasions  when  she  appeared  in  society,  and  if  Sydney  was  not 
popular  he  had  abundant  obeisance  done  to  him.  No  one  cried 
out  against  him  that  he  had  committed  theft,  forgery,  and  mur- 
der, when  he  stood  up  in  the  Abbey  Holme  pew  on  Sundays, 
and  enriched  the  choir  with  his  clear  tenor  that  sounded  above 
all  the  rest.  Nor  when  he  sat  on  the  bench  and  leaned  ever 
to  the  side  of  rigour  and  righteousness,  did  his  brother  magis- 
trates denounce  him  as  a  greater  criminal  than  the  poor  half- 
witted clods  whom  he  judged  so  severely.  What  was  done, 
was  done ;  and  no  one  knew  or  ever  would  know  ;  and  for  the 
rest  he  passed  through  life  in  the  odour  of  respectability,  be- 


TRUTH  AND  SEEMING.  477 

loved  by  none,  known  by  none,  bearing  ever  with  him  the  con- 
sciousness of  crime  and  the  belief  in  his  own  eternal  damnation, 
but  bowed  down  to  by  all.  Was  he  not  the  master  of  Abbey 
Holme,  and  the  wealthiest  man  for  miles  round  ?  Does  the 
world  ask  more,  or  seek  to  know  more  than  this  1 

Patricia  spent  her  days  tranquilly  enough  at  the  Hollies  in 
the  midst  of  love  and  duty.  There  were  no  brilliant  meteors 
in  her  sky,  but  no  clouds  and  no  storms  ;  it  was  sunlight  of  the 
best  kind — the  sunlight  of  affection,  contentment,  and  a  pure 
conscience.  Her  happy  girlhood  had  passed  for  ever,  but  it 
had  left  a  womanhood  greater  and  nobler  than  itself  had  been ; 
a  womanhood  of  deeper  thought  and  higher  aims — yes, 'and  of 
a  more  exalted  love  than  would  have  come  to  her  had  she  re- 
mained untaught  of  sorrow. 

Yet  she  was  always  under  a  cloud  at  Milltown,  and  she  never 
lived  down  the  vague  disrepute  that  hung  about  her  fair  fame. 
Every  one  said  that  she  had  done  something  very  wrong  once, 
though  no  one  knew  exactly  what  it  was ;  and  the  Fletchers 
were  too  "  queer  "  themselves  to  reinstate  her  by  their  respect. 
Her  very  severance  too  from  Dora  told  against  her ;  and,  as 
the  world  argued,  if  she  could  have  estranged  one  so  sweet  and 
amiable  and  forgiving  as  Mrs.  Sydney  Lowe,  what  must  she 
not  have  done,  what  must  she  not  have  been !  She  was  con- 
scious of  this  public  disfavour,  which  she  neither  braved  nor 
feared.  She  knew  that  she  had  not  deserved  it,  so  bore  with 
equanimity  the  high  estate  and  public  honour  of  those  who 
had  done  the  wrong,  and  the  general  condemnation  of  herself 
who  had  only  suffered  by  it.  Between  truth  and  seeming  she 
had  chosen  the  better  part,  and  she  never  regretted  her  elec- 
tion. 

Years  passed  before  Gordon  returned,  but  years  that  did 
good  work  in  both.  When  the  drift-time  was  over,  and  they 
stood  once  more  together  hand  in  hand  on  the  seashore  as  in  the 
old  days,  she  was  no  longer  a  girl  living  only  in  the  joy  of  her 
own  youth  and  love  and  innocence,  but  a  woman  who  had 
learnt  the  deeper  meaning  of  life  through  the  high  teaching  of 
suffering  and  trial  ;  a  woman  self-consecrated  to  live,  like  the 
Fletchers,  by  principle  rather  than  expediency  ;  for  truth,  not 
seeming  ;  for  the  inner  law  of  nobleness,  not  the  outer  gain  of 
pleasure.  And  he  too  was  no  longer  the  mere  boy  who  h*d 


478  "  WHAT  WOULD  YOU  DO,  LOVE  ?  " 

the  boy's  hope  and  the  boy's  courage,  but  a  man  who  had 
learnt  like  herself  something  of  the  deeper  meaning  of  the 
Great  Kiddie,  and  had  set  himself  to  live  according  to  his  know- 
ledge. 

She  and  Gordon  were  poor  enough  when  they  married  ;  and 
Dora,  now  that  she  was  no  longer  afraid  of  Patricia,  knowing 
by  experience  how  entirely  she  might  trust  her  silence  and 
loyalty,  pitied  them  profoundly  from  the  luxurious  depths  of 
her  gorgeous,  loveless,  miserable  home.  She  would  have 
helped  them  generously,  if  they  would  have  taken  help  at  her 
hand.  But  Patricia,  though  she  had  long  ago  forgiven  her 
freely  and  fully — long  ago  resolved  to  bear  that  burden  of 
shame  for  her  to  her  life's  end,  patiently  and  faithfully — would 
never  enter  into  terms  of  friendship  with  her  again.  Besides, 
though  poor  in  the  world's  goods  she  was  infinitely  richer  in 
heart  and  spirit  than  the  faded,  frightened,  melancholy  mistress 
of  Abbey  Holme  ;  the  wife  of  the  man  who  slept  with  locked 
doors  and  a  loaded  revolver  by  his  side,  and  who  had  bad  dreams 
and  believed  in  his  own  eternal  destruction. 

She  never  felt  so  keenly  how  far  better  truth  is  than  seem- 
ing, and  love  than  riches,  as  when,  one  summer  evening,  she 
and  the  Fletchers  and  Gordon  were  standing  on  the  high  cliff 
road,  looking  at  the  golden  sunset  just  now  flooding  earth  and 
sky  with  that  glory  which  no  words,  no  pigments,  can  possi- 
bly describe.  They  were  watching  the  gradual  passing  of  the 
gold  to  crimson,  and  then  to  deeper  purpl«,  in  that  quiet,  half- 
entranced  way  which  makes  silence  so  eloquent  when  a  carriage 
drove  slowly  past.  It  was  the  Abbey  Holme  carriage,  contain- 
ing Dora  and  her  husband.  Dress,  appointment,  equipage — all 
were  of  the  costliest  kind,  the  most  absolute  perfection.  The 
land  they  drove  over  was  their  own ;  the  men  they  passed  did 
homage  to  them,  their  masters ;  they  had  conquered  fortune 
and  distanced  justice ;  they  were  above  even  the  accidents  of 
life  ;  and  they  had  means  to  gratify  every  conceivable  desire. 
But  the  inner  misery  of  the  faces  that  looked  out  from  those 
superb  surroundings  sufficiently  confessed  their  worthlessness. 

"  Well !  for  all  their  money  I  would  not  exchange  places 
with  those  people,"  said  Gordon,  as  they  passed.  "  It  is  not 
what  we  have,  but  what  we  are,  that  tells ;  and  of  the  two  we 
are  the  more  to  be  envied — what  do  you  say,  Pat  ? n 


TRUTH   AND  SEEJIING.  479 

She  looked  up  into  her  husband's  handsome,  manly  face, 
bending  down  to  hers  with  such  frank  and  trustful  love. 

"  I  think  so,"  she  said  earnestly. 

"  And  I  know  it,"  said  Henry  Fletcher  taking  her  hand  on 
his  arm.  "  Between  Dora  and  Patricia  the  world  would  make 
no  doubt  which  was  the  more  to  be  envied ;  but  I  fancy  the 
judgment  of  God  will  not  go  with  the  verdict  of  the  world  ; 
and  that  truth  and  seeming  were  never  at  greater  odds  than 
they  are  and  have  been  all  through  the  history  of  these  two 
girls !  " 

"  Thank  God  the  truth  has  come  to  my  share !  "  said  Gordon 
fervently.  "  I  should  have  done  ill  with  a  whited  sepulchre. 
Don't  you  remember,  Pat,  how  I  always  counted  on  your  true- 
heartedness  ? «! 

She  laughed  a  little  shyly,  and  blushed  vividly. 

"Yes,"  she  said,  looking  at  him  tenderly.  "I  remember 
how'  good  you  always  were  to  me  !  And  so  long  $&  you  and 
these  dear  ones  are  satisfied  with  me  I  am  quite  happy.  And 
I  don't  think  people  want  much  more  than  love,  and  that  their 
own  consciences  should  not  condemn  them  to  make  life  only 
sweet ! " 

"  Dear  child,"  said  Catherine  caressingly.  "  How  sweet  life 
must  be  to  you  then  ! " 

"  To  us  all  1 "  she  answered. 

"  Yes,"  answered  Gordon ;  "to  us  all  1 


THE  HtlX 


v:  '   "•     "•   . 


